


Lay Me Down in Your Ocean

by festlich, imperfectkreis



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood, Body Horror, Child Abandonment, Child Death, Disfigurement, Human Sacrifice, Illustrated, M/M, Monsters, NSFW Art, Oral Sex, The Void, Vomiting, life after death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2018-10-05 06:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/festlich/pseuds/festlich, https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectkreis/pseuds/imperfectkreis
Summary: Corvo Attano considers himself a man of simple pleasures, if complex circumstances. He never asked for this. But now that he has the Outsider's final gift, he intends to use it to better the world that he remains tethered to. But so too, is he connected to the Void.The Outsider just couldn't bear to see him disappear.(written by imperfectkreis/illustrated by festlich)





	1. .one

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags. I'll be doing the best to label at the top of each chapter what potentially unsettling/graphic themes will be described. But keep in mind the "body horror" is applicable to most chapters.
> 
> Other than body horror, there isn't much in this chapter. There are some bodily (non-sexual) consent issues as well.

Corvo Attano, the Royal Protector, does not expect to die in his sleep.

He has always assumed, that when he leaves the mortal coil, it will be with a sword in his hand, and a dagger between his ribs. Or, maybe, poison running down his throat, a bullet in the back, arsenic on his tongue, like a lover’s kiss.

But year after year stretches on, his limbs growing heavy, beginning to frail. 

Emily grows older too, the lines around her eyes, bracketing her smile, growing deeper, darker, with her experience. She smiles a great deal now. Being Empress suits her more with age, like a well-worn blade.

So, when Corvo passes in the night, his heart deciding the exact moment he is finished, he does not regret the tapestry of his life.

There is the darkness of nothing that awaits him. 

One he does not reach.

Of course not. Because at some point, in the sixty-odd years of his life, he managed to attract more attention than he intended. So he should not be so surprised, when something other than oblivion awaits him on the other side of mortality.

Instead of a quiet death, his consciousness breaking into the foam of the Cosmos, melting against the cliffs of boundless eternity, he remains anchored in time and space. Yet, he feels his essence ripped painfully in all directions.

Corvo has always thought himself a man of simple pleasures, if complex circumstances. Nothing would please him more than a clean, blunt end to his life. But after his heart stops beating, he can feel his flesh tearing. Muscle and sinew trying to rip itself away from sturdy bone.

The pain of it is agonizing. Worst than any demise he can fathom. The tearing, mashing of gnarled skin, breaking bones. He is being remade by forces beyond his control. Ground up and poured back into a cruel mould.

He tries to chase the tendrils of his being, hold himself together in something approaching coherence. It becomes clear that the Nothing beyond the Void will fail to be his final resting place, at least for now.

Fighting through the pain, he claws his way to the surface, trying to draw air into his lungs. But his fragile organs are in tatters. When he tries to breathe, he can feel his insides fluttering, shredded and loose inside the cavity of his torso.

When he opens his eyes to meet the Void, he has more eyes than he should. Something is gravely wrong. Holding his hands out, he sees only bare bone and dark, swirling smoke, wrapping him in choking ether.

He takes his hands to his face, ghosting over the solid surface of his mechanical mask, the one Piero built for him years ago. He tries to pull the blasted thing off, only to find it permanently affixed in place. Blinking again, he shivers, realization flooding over him, threatening to drown. He has been made a monster.

Stepping out across the surface of the Void, his heels click against the slate floor. He looks up, into the ocean-sky, serene and reflective, and sees what manner of creature he has become.

The mask sits atop a body of bone, melting flesh, and cloth. Around him, a cloud of smoke fills in what gaps remain, billowing out every time he moves his limbs. Though his face is covered, white teeth protrude from the top of his skull, mangled in places they do not belong. He tries to open his mouth, but finds it trapped beneath the metal of the mask. Even so, he has no tongue.

At first, every step he takes is accompanied by the sensation of being pulled, onward, outward, towards the Cosmos. But it is the mask, he realizes, that keeps him anchored to the Void. Despite the fact he has no voice, he tries to shout, for the god who has no doubt brought him here.

Outsider.

Up ahead, tucked somewhere among the floating outcroppings of rock, suspended in the Void, Corvo sees movement, shadows dancing along the stones. He tries to run, blotting out the pain, his own elasticity trying to hold him back. In a way, it is easier to move now than it was when he was alive. His mortal body had begun to fail in so many ways. Here, he can still move like water. As he starts to stretch and bend, the pain recedes.

But as fast as he may be, he cannot catch the black ghost ahead of him. Leaping from platform to platform, he reaches a gap that is too wide for him to jump. 

Corvo reaches out his hand, what remains of it. The Outsider’s Mark is there, carved deep into his bone, where his hand has been bare for over a decade. Delilah stole his powers during the coup. Corvo never asked for them back. The Outsider claimed Emily instead. 

The Mark glows purple-dark, as Corvo calls upon the magic, gifted to him by the god he’ll never worship.

Blinking from platform to platform, Corvo stays in pursuit. If only because he has no other options. When he stretches his arm forward, he realizes how much further he can reach. When he runs, he can feel the trail of smoke that follows him.

Upon landing on what must be the hundredth stone slab in succession, Corvo stops to assess his position. Every direction looks the same, gray, hard, unmoved by his desperation. The Void is dark and he is alone.

A swarm of headless crows appears in front of him, whirling wings and flapping feathers. As the birds fall away, phasing back out of existence, Corvo realizes they were not crows at all, but black fish, gasping for air long denied them.

“My dear Corvo,” only the Outsider remains after the fish disperse. A smile on his lips, arms loose at his sides. Corvo could strangle him where he stands. But his desires have never made a bit of difference, when the Outsider is involved. “You've come.”

Corvo tries to sneer, to scream, but his mouth still won't work. He pounds at the mask with his fists, trying in vain to pull it apart.

“Corvo?” the Outsider’s thin lips part, his mouth forming a gentle “o.” He draws his hands in front of his face. But it is too late, Corvo already recognizes the Outsider’s unbidden surprise.

Finally, Corvo speaks, though it is not with any voice he has commanded before. The words emanate from somewhere deep inside him. He does not speak with his mouth. “What have you done?”

Reaching out with one hand, the Outsider runs his fingers down the front of Corvo’s mask, “You're so beautiful.”

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?” This time, Corvo roars.

The Outsider pulls his hand away, his face falling, “I-” he hesitates, in a manner unfitting of a god. “I decided long ago...that...oh.” He reaches forward with both hands now, cradling Corvo’s mask as he would a lover’s face. “I couldn't bear the thought of your mortality,” the Outsider whispers. Though there is not a single, forsaken soul that can hear them here.

Corvo cannot feel the Outsider’s affections through the mask. In any case, he does not want them.

“I only wanted you, here, with me always. I...you are so very dear.”

Reaching up, Corvo snatches at the Outsider’s wrists, their bodies phasing through one another. Of course, it is not as if the Outsider is mortal flesh. In a moment of hysterical panic, Corvo thinks that he could laugh. He is only bone now. How grotesque.

“I did not want this,” Corvo tries to grab at him again, this time connecting, wrenching the Outsider’s hand away.

The Outsider’s eyes widen in response, dawning realization painted across his normally impassive face. “I did not consider…” his eyes are so dark, so bright, as to soak up all light that tries to enter. Pulling his hands back, the Outsider steps away. “I will...correct this error. To the best of my abilities.” He wrings his hands together. “I only wanted...I only wanted you.”

Corvo seethes, but he has nothing more to say. This is a blunder on the Outsider’s part, an act of selfishness by a thoughtless god. Corvo has always found the Outsider’s mannerisms to be suffocating, his affected speech, his disdain a thin veil over a too-sincere heart. One would think, after all the atrocities of men he has witnessed, that the Outsider would be colder, harder, operating with practiced indifference. But Corvo knows that at his core, the Outsider still carries the remains of an impulsive child.

“You have a choice to make, Corvo,” the Outsider pulls his lips straight, clasping one hand around the opposite wrist. The rings on his fingers shine stark against the pallor of his skin. “So few have the opportunity.”

The school of black fish swirl around the Outsider’s narrow frame, fading out into the clear Void overhead. Only the Outsider’s voice remains, bouncing off the slate.

“I can return you to the Dark. You may meet the death so seem to somehow crave.” The Outsider steps out of the shadows again, some twenty feet ahead, forcing Corvo to walk towards him. With long strides, Corvo reaches him within seconds. “Or, you may keep the last of my gifts.”

“Under what conditions?” Corvo asks, though the Outsider has never demanded a specific price of him before.

“None,” the Outsider is quick to correct. “I have never been as amused with a man as I am with you.” Placing his palm flat against Corvo’s chest, the Outsider tries to soothe. But Corvo does not wish to be consoled. “You need to only tell me your decision.”

There is nothing to be learned from the Outsider’s eyes, the endless well of black. Instead, Corvo watches the corners of his mouth, the twitch along his jaw. The Outsider’s face is without flaw, eternally beautiful in its composition. And, in this moment, the god is devastated by his own mistake.

Corvo should choose death. But, he has always been a heretic. Just not the one the Abbey, or the Outsider, believe him to be.

Reaching forward, Corvo skims his bones down the front of the Outsider’s jacket, the dark, heather fabric and brass buttons that are still in style. The Outsider’s lips part, waiting for Corvo’s answer. He wants absolution.

Corvo says nothing. As much as the forces of the Void and the Cosmos beyond pull at him, he can push back.

He throws himself from the Void, leaping from the platform, his talons clawing in the direction of Dunwall.

\--

Corvo perches atop the shingled rooftop of the raucous tavern at the dockside. The tavern has changed names eight times in half as many years, passing from owner to owner, none of whom can stomach the work. It's about more than selling drinks.

His position on the low roof leaves him too close to the ground, within the line of sight of Dunwall City guards. It is only the darkness of his still-grotesque form that keeps him from being noticed.

It is his intention to scale the city walls, climb his way to the high rooftops overhead, where he may walk unnoticed. But first, he must teach his new body to behave.

Blink is at his disposal, and his night vision needs no coaxing. He remembers his old magics well enough. But there are other powers too, simmering under the surface of the fog, clinging to his tortured bones.

Reaching his hand out, he watches as the Mark glows. Must it always remind him of the pact he made, so long ago? Maybe he was foolish to think himself a free man.

The fog around his hand forms claws, long and sharp. He only wishes to Blink to the nearest open window, just on the other side of the alleyway. From there, he will decide his next move.

He Blinks to the window sill. The curtains rustle in the gentle breeze off the harbor. Inside the apartment, he can hear a mother with her child, babbling to them as she watches the servant cook supper. All the lights are on in her apartment, to keep the darkness out.

Corvo extends his arm again, aiming at the ventilation duct above. Only this time, instead of extending one arm, he has two. The second is less defined than the first, simply a mess of smoke, with no bone to hold it solid. Void, he is still falling apart. He must learn to stitch this cursed form together. He Blinks again.

From the ventilation duct, Corvo can find purchase against the brick wall. It's not so very far to reach the pitched roof. He wonders, now that he has four arms instead of two, if he can scramble to the top.

He puts his bone hand against the brick, clamping down before reaching forward with the new limbs made purely of smoke. They stretch farther upwards, curling around the lip of the roof above.

When he tries to pull his weight up, he finds the fog appendages lack the strength he needs to vault himself upwards. But they support his weight enough to steady himself, while he uses his bone limbs to scale the vertical wall.

Once atop the roof, Corvo looks out across the boats docked in the harbor. In the distance, he sees the Tower.

Emily. He wants to see Emily.

He's certain his newfound form possesses more skills he has yet to discover. But his priority has to be fashioning a less horrific form. 

It is not as if Emily is particularly delicate in her constitution. Anything but. She herself can walk as a shadow, reaching forward with long-clawed hands, similar to those he now wields. Her gifts from the same god. But just as easily, she can revert back to her tidy, human form. Corvo must learn to do the same.

Concentrating on the tendrils of fog that make up his second set of arms, Corvo tries to draw them back inside the confines of his body. Everything is fog, bone, and tattered flesh. At the very least, he should be able to tame the smoke, hide it under his jacket.

He feels his body shifting, bulging as he draws into himself, hiding the unneeded limbs into the mass of mist churning underneath his clothing. Good. That's a start. The next order of business seems somewhat more daunting, fixing the damage to his head.

Knowing that he must do something about the mess of eyes and teeth lodged in his skull is one matter. Disguising it properly is another. He tries to focus his attention on his face, the back of his head, his ears, but he cannot feel the shift of bone. When he reaches up to pat against the crown of his head, where he saw his features out of place, he still feels the signs of disfigurement. His mouth does not open. His mask does not come off.

He resigns himself to pulling up his hood, the fabric keeping what he cannot mend out of sight. It will have to do, for now.

\--

Corvo reaches Dunwall Tower as his daughter prepares for bed. She is still dressed in mourning black. Corvo’s funeral was this morning.

There are flowers, blooming anemones imported from Karnaca, in a vase on her vanity. They watch over her as she unpins her hair.

Wyman putters about the bedroom. Corvo can hear them cough. Emily has not shut the door, leaving it partially ajar. But Corvo wants it closed, before he steps inside. Any measure of privacy is better than none.

Though her eyes are rimmed-red, Emily hums to herself. Reaching behind her neck, she unclasps the hook on her necklace, returning it to her jewelry box.

The blasted door!

With a sharp crack, the door closes. Emily spins around to look, calling out to her consort. They reply, assuring her that they are fine. It must have been the wind.

Corvo does not question his luck, crawling in through Emily’s window. He does not wish to startle her, only get her attention. But, he cannot speak.

_Emily, darling._

She looks up again, kohl running down her cheek from one eye as she tries to remove it. In defense, she pulls out the short blade she keeps tucked into her boot. He's taught her well.

She is too skilled, too practiced, to lunge out carelessly at her assumed assailant. Instead, she lies in wait, anticipating that the stranger in her chambers will clumsily make the first move. Corvo tries to reach her again.

_Emily, my sweet girl._

But there is no sound other than the wind in the curtains. Corvo must make himself seen.

He steps from the shadows into light, prepared for Emily to lash out at him, as she would with any intruder. Corvo has no sword, but he also is dimly aware that her blade can do little to outright hurt him.

Emily spins in a flash, knife held firmly in her hand. She slashes with long-won precision, slicing at Corvo’s throat. He raises his arms to deflect the attack, her knife catching in the fabric of his coat. The blade slices through, fog seeping through the gash.

Emily’s eyes go wide, but she does not scream. She is at once both too proud and too cautious. Baring her teeth, she slashes again. Corvo narrowly manages to grab her wrist, before she can cut him a second time. He can read her movements easily. Not because of a lack of talent on her part. Only because he was the one who trained her.

Kicking out with her legs, Emily catches Corvo in the stomach, sliding backwards when he releases her wrist. She draws her blade again.

“How dare you,” she hisses, “how dare you wear my father’s face?” So, she has noticed the mask.

Corvo must find a way to make her see, understand what he has become. Or, at least, that he is the remains of her father. She doesn’t have to understand, only believe. An idea strikes him.

Rather than try and engage Emily again, he reaches towards her jewelry box. She is certain to have kept it. Burying it would be unwise.

“No!” she finally shouts. Wyman is sure to hear.

Corvo has no room for error. He finds his signet ring, tucked into the box. He knows it without looking, simply from the weight of it.

Sliding the ring onto his finger, Corvo hopes that this works. If the Outsider can use the mask to trap him in this form, perhaps the ring holds forbidden magics as well. Or at least fond memories.

Wyman stumbles through the door, their hair loose around their shoulders. Knowing little of combat, outside ceremonial exhibitions, they’ll be little help to Emily. But the thought of protecting her is sweet.

With the ring around his finger, Corvo tries again to shift the bones and skin that should make up his face. If he can at least get his mouth in order, he can try to explain. And, Void, this time, he does feel his skull contracting, underneath the fabric of his hood. It’s working. He almost can’t believe it’s working.

“Emily!” he tries his voice, But still his mouth does not move.

Emily lowers her blade, eyes narrowing. “You sound like him…”

Wyman stands frozen in the doorway, one hand clutched around the frame.

Though he still cannot move his mouth, at the very least, Emily can hear him now. Tugging at the mask, Corvo finds it still firmly stuck in place.

“Emily,” he can think of no better explanation, or proof.

She takes a cautious step towards him. Wyman’s knuckles turn pale.

Looking at Corvo’s hands, she finally realizes that he is not human. At least not anymore. And yet the ring fits perfectly on his finger, where instead of flesh, there is fog.

“You are my father,” she realizes. “You are dead, and yet here.” Shaking her head, Emily takes his hand between both of hers. Her fine-manicured fingers pass through the mist, coming to rest on bare bone. “What happened to you?”

“The Outsider,” he almost laughs, “It appears I was too interesting to let pass by.”

“Leave us,” Emily turns to Wyman, bidding them for privacy.

Wyman knows better than to question the Empress. That is one of the few things Corvo has always liked about them.

Closing the door behind them, Wyman departs. Emily runs her fingers over the shell of Corvo’s mask. “You did not ask for this, then?”

“Does the Outsider ever ask?”

Her smile is faint. Of course, she knows, “He does, but not in a way you are likely to refuse.”

“Well,” Corvo can feel his rage against the god spiking again, churning around inside his jacket. In a moment of broken concentration, one of his limbs escapes from under his coat. Emily eyes it with suspicion, but says nothing. “This time, he gave no warning.”

“What do you plan to do?” Emily asks, being none-too-subtle as she looks over Corvo’s newly gifted body. It is...a lot to take in.

Corvo has no plans, other than staying away from that wretched god. “I’m sure all you wanted was your overprotective father back.”

Emily snickers, “Good, you can help me choose your successor in the position of Royal Protector.”

“Void,” Corvo curses.


	2. .two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes scenes of kidnapping/child endangerment, body horror, canon typical violence

  
The Outsider folds his legs, sitting on the cool slate that forms the skeleton of his home. The Void stretches out in all directions, haunted by the Leviathans that still live. They float across the expanse of the Void, their souls both here, and among mortal men. The Outsider knows each and every one by their song, by the ages they have survived.

They speak back to him in musical tones, reverberating through the ether. The whales have always recognized him, even before he was called Outsider. They knew who he was, what he was sure to become. 

When he first melded with the Void, they thought him so precious. So new. Now they are all old, himself included.

“I have made a mistake,” the Outsider reaches out his hand, as one of his companions skates by. He lets his fingers drag across their underbelly, feeling out the smooth texture of their fatty skin.

Not all the Leviathans are equally massive. But he will always be the smallest one. The others think him weak. What a silly body! Unsuited for the vastness of the Void. The Outsider cannot travel very far. It is good, though, they have always told him, that he has his powers, so unlike their own. And the humans! It is good that the humans help the Outsider survive.

One of the whales call out to him, recognizing his grief. They assure him that there is no mistake. The Outsider has not made a mistake. The Leviathans are above such things. Even the smallest.

It is only men, transitory and impulsive, who make mistakes.

The Outsider is unsure how to explain that part of him, perhaps too much, is still human. No matter how many years of isolation, of contamination with the Void, he still sometimes feels very much a man.

It was weakness, on his part, to fashion a plan, however crude, to keep Corvo from becoming Nothing. Easy enough, when he visited Piero in his sleep, to give him visions, so he would know how to build Corvo’s mask. And that mask lay the groundwork for Corvo’s captivity. Only, the Outsider did not think of it in such terms. The magic that he affixed to Corvo’s mask was not meant to be a prison. It was intended as another gift, for the dearest of his Marked. An insurance policy, that Corvo would not be eaten up by death.

But the Outsider sees it now, though only a handful of years have passed since Corvo first died and was reborn, that revoking Corvo’s choice in the matter, tampering with his free will, smashes through the very boundaries the Outsider placed upon himself. 

The wretched idea of losing Corvo struck his core with an intensity that made him stupid, impulsive, human. The Outsider should not have done this.

“This will pass,” the Leviathan calls to him, “everything shall pass.”

That is not why the Outsider regrets what he has done.

The Outsider has no choice in the matter now. Corvo is gone. Not to the Nothing that the Outsider so feared, but cast out upon the mortal world.

Such a beautiful monster.

When the Outsider saw Corvo, with his long limbs, claws, teeth, all sharp edges formed from soft smoke, he could not help but ache. How the Outsider wishes it were him, his body contorted into a massacre that would strike fear in the hearts of those who look upon him. It was his only wish, when he first arrived in the Void. Scared. Alone. To become a creature that those who stole his life would fear in their sleep. 

Over time, he has grown ambivalent in the matter. This pretty body, with narrow hips and a soft mouth, is what the Void chose for him. And it has been useful.

As the cultists grew old and died, the Outsider saw the wisdom in the Void’s decision. But, oh, how seeing Corvo aroused him, made him want.

If he could look a demon, perhaps the Outsider would have less to fear.

\--

Emily appoints a new Royal Protector. A skilled, attractive young woman from the Outer Isles who wears her hair in braids and soft dancing shoes when she fights. Her family is decidedly middle-class, and she’s had the best education coin can buy. 

But that is not why Emily chooses Kyra Blake. Kyra becomes Royal Protector because she leaves red ribbons tied neatly around the necks of three of the four best candidates as they sleep. The fourth withdraws his name the next morning, once he has heard of his competitor’s fates.

Corvo thinks her an excellent choice. But that does not mean he leaves.

His presence in the Tower is perhaps only a slightly better guarded secret than the Mark across Emily’s hand. Mostly because the idea of Corvo Attano haunting the hallways sounds too fantastical, even for a family long suspected to have the favor of a heretical god.

It is not so much that the Kaldwins have the Outsider’s favor, as his interest. Corvo does not doubt the Outsider watches him, though no invitations are extended from the Void.

“Does he ever visit you, in sleep?” Corvo asks his daughter one morning, as she flips through lithographs.

“Not once since Delilah,” she admits. “I don’t think this,” she raises her wrapped left hand dismissively, “was ever intended for me.”

“Of course it was,” Corvo argues, “otherwise, he would have chosen someone else.”

Yet, he cannot help but be relieved that Emily is Marked. Though the gift is always double-edged. Her powers allow her to follow him through Dunwall, traversing the rooftops, slithering through the streets. They may travel the city for little more reason than entertainment, but that is enough to keep them both satisfied, when Tower life grows painfully dull. Corvo almost wishes they could have shared such experiences when he was still alive.

“Does he visit you?” Emily asks in return.

“I do not sleep,” Corvo says, meaning to deflect her question.

“Do you want him to?”

“No.”

She does not question the veracity of his reply.

\--

Years streak by with little change. Emily’s hair starts to gray; Corvo becomes more accustomed to the limits and affordances of his new powers. Controlling his body becomes easier, and other than the mask, he can fashion a form almost passable as human, providing he is fully dressed.

By the tenth year of his new life, he can feel his mouth open under the mask. By the twelfth, he can speak with his tongue. The first time he does so in front of Wyman, they shriek with joy. Though Corvo has done little to hide his presence from Wyman over the years, they have not been able to converse. The rumbling, disembodied speech he has been able to use with Emily, sounded like garbled nonsense to Wyman’s ears.

In his fifteenth year, he can remove the mask.

“Not as bad as I expected,” Wyman chirps, crossing their hands over their chest. “Though, still not great.”

Emily shoves at her spouse, but with little malice. “They just don’t remember what you looked like,” she tries to comfort Corvo.

“That bad?” Corvo asks, though he doesn’t really care. The mask has not hindered him over the past years. Only Emily and Wyman ever see him for more than a glancing moment, and they have become accustomed to his sometimes strange, sometimes ordinary appearance.

“You do not look as you did when you died,” Emily explains, “here.” She holds out her mirror for Corvo to look.

It is true, he looks much younger, though some of his features are still...lumpier than he remembers. He looks much like he did when the Outsider first Marked him, when he was given the mask by Piero. His skin is somewhat grayer, similar to the flesh on his hands, which he cannot quite make the same warm brown he was in life, even if he can will his body to be considerably more solid now. He's sure that will come with time.

Taking the mask up from Emily’s vanity, he inspects the inside. It is not a replica, it is the original, for certain. But there are no etchings or marks of any kind inside, to suggest the Outsider tampered with it. And now, he is able to remove it, but he remains in the realm of men.

“Strange…”

“Were you expecting otherwise?” Wyman finds it very hard to be serious, especially in the most trying times.

\--

Though Corvo can perhaps force his body to look somewhat acceptable to the living, he does so no more than necessary: when he wishes to pass unnoticed through the busy capital streets, when he speaks to Wyman, when he plays cards with Emily. Otherwise, he is no longer repulsed by the idiosyncrasies of his existence. They have allowed him more time with his daughter than he thought possible. 

Emily and Corvo dance upon the rooftops of Dunwall. Emily shifts to her shadow form with ease. Her long limbs and smoke-face almost match Corvo’s. She jokes she is truly her father’s daughter.

She is always smiling when they return to the Tower, her thinning cheeks flushed with exertion from their adventures. 

Emily tells Corvo, that though this is not what he wanted, she has treasured every moment they have had together.

Corvo cannot help but agree. 

He never meets the heir, his grandchild. They all agree it's for the best. It may be impossible to shield the child from the Outsider’s influence entirely, but they must at least make the attempt. Corvo only knows their face from paintings, hung upon the Tower walls. Every year, there is a new portrait. Corvo watches them grow up through art. 

When Wyman dies, Emily is sullen for a full year. She follows Corvo at night, and they skip across the skyline, but it is not the same. She loved them with her whole heart, until the end. But though with age her joints grow painful, cut through with constant ache, she asks Corvo to go running, shifting to her shadow form.

They never speak directly of the fears they must both hold. The heir turns seventeen. Emily has already lived two decades longer than her mother. She'll live decades more, but she will die.

Corvo knows she will die. Because the Outsider is not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.

Though he also knows that is not the reason for the Empress’ safety.

In Corvo’s thirty-second year as a phantom, Empress Emily Kaldwin, First of her Name, dies.

Corvo attends the ascension of her child. But he does not attend the Empress’ funeral. Emily is in the Nothing now, and Corvo is glad. Her reign has been long, and while not without strife, she leaves a better world than the one into which she was born. For that, Corvo can only be glad.

\--

The Outsider Marks a girl. She is very pretty, when she washes her face in the swelling tides. Coarse, white salt clings to her pant legs, after the ocean water dries.

The other transients call her “Moth,” because she plays too close to the fire. Year by year, the Outsider becomes more certain she’ll be swallowed up at both ends. Flame or flood, one of them will drown her.

He Marks her when she turns twelve, visiting her in a dream. She asks if he is very lonely in the Void? He is not at all what she expected.

“Have you thought of me before?” the Outsider asks her.

“Only once. Carver and Vahna built a shrine. They tried to summon you, with a painting they stole from a dead man’s apartment.”

That is at least mildly interesting, “They would have been better off selling the art.”

“I told them that!” she rocks back on her heels. Her feet are bare. But in the Void, she perhaps cannot feel the cold. That, or living in the gutters has made her sturdy. 

He Marks her and sends her on her way. There is little of particular interest about the girl. But she is young, vulnerable, and likes to defy her betters. So the Outsider likes her just long enough to wait and see what changes she’ll bring.

When she lives to twenty, he is very glad. She has a baby at twenty-one. She keeps the Mark covered with fingerless gloves on both hands. She uses her powers for petty thievery against the wealthier classes.

She kills a guard who tries to touch her, when she is twenty-four. She sets him on fire, charring him from the inside out. The unusual circumstances of his death leads to an investigation, which unearths corruption inside the guard ranks. A new Commissioner is called in from Morley. The Commissioner stops a ship from leaving port. There are twenty-seven hidden children in the belly of the ship. Only eight of them have names. But now, all of them will live.

The Outsider rarely knows the direct consequences that will be spun out by those he Marks. In this case, he thinks he has chosen well. He likes the consequences.

\--

The Commissioner's name is Gill Tavish. In her youth, she was called Gilly, but that's not respectable for her station. Corvo knows little about her, other than the guardspeople hate her. They do not think her above bribery or favoritism, only they haven't been able to pinpoint her pleasures yet.

Corvo has little to occupy his time now, other than watching, waiting. Without Emily, the Tower is no longer as welcoming as it once was. 

So he follows Tavish on her rounds, reading through her meticulous notes while she's otherwise engaged in questioning suspects within the ranks. He watches her comb through decades of reports, trying with all sincerity to dredge the illness from the waters of the City Watch.

Dunwall will eat her alive.

But when she halts the departure of a ship at port, running along the dockside, the order clenched in her fist, Corvo watches very closely. His figure masked along the shoreline.

They pull children from the cargo hold. More of them that Corvo can stomach. Small hands reaching towards the light. He does not confirm until later, that they had been packed in wooden crates for the journey south.

Tavish lacks the resources to carry her investigation regarding the children forward. It is only by chance that she found the lead at all. Her duty is to the City Watch, not chasing down human traffickers.

But Corvo, Corvo has little but time and his powers, augmented by his mortal skill. He resolves to take up the hunt. At night, he slips in past the guards to investigate the ship’s hold for himself.

While the ship has been delayed, Tavish will be unable to hold it in Dunwall much longer. Corvo hears the guards suggesting it will depart in the morning, once questioning of the crewpeople has been completed. The ship’s captain claims to know little. Some of the crew refuse to talk, but that is common among sailors, guilty or not. They tend to hold their tongues.

The crates, while now empty, have not yet been moved. Corvo searches for any clue to their origin. He walks silently through the belly of the ship, trying to glean what he can before it is too late.

The crates are labeled with McKintosh Fisheries, an operation of some renown. But that doesn't mean much. They could have been pulled from the garbage heap. Though, they still smell woody and clean, without the sour rot of fish.

Corvo finds little to give structure to his investigation. The children are all gone. Some of them are being held by the Watch. Many of the boys have been turned over to the Overseers. If they have no parents to claim them, they will be inducted into the sect.

Perhaps he can begin with the children who have names? The few in the process of being returned to worried parents? There must be documentation somewhere. Corvo does not have the luxury of questioning them directly. Even were he still human, he lacks any poise in speech.

Before he leaves, he examines the other, intact crates. The ship’s captain said that all he knew about his cargo was that it was all perishable. There are no boxes of ice-packed fish. But there are dozens of crates of apples, ready for export. They are picked green in Gristol, then shipped south, where they are harder to grow. Grapes make the journey in reverse.

Corvo can see through the wooden slats easily enough. They contain nothing but apples, save one box, where three knives are tucked in among the fruit. That box he pries open, pulling out the blades before trying to disguise the box has been tampered with. He moves the adulterated box under several others. No one will notice before the ship reaches its final destination.

\--

Of the twenty-seven children found, only eight are claimed. Six are kidnappings from impoverished families, lacking the resources to mount their own searches for their beloved children. What little investigation the Watch carries out leads to nothing. One of the children was sold willingly for coin. He is perhaps Corvo’s strongest lead.

The final boy is decisively middle-class. Stolen on his way from school to his piano lesson. His parents are nearly bankrupt now, having soaked their money into private investigators to track their cherished boy. Perhaps there is something more to be learned from them as well.

Corvo shoves the records back into Tavish’s safe before he leaves, ensuring that nothing is amiss. For thirty-five years, he has kept his presence in Dunwall a secret. He wonders now if there was always more he should have done for his daughter’s Empire, rather than always being at her side.

He cannot go back. Only forward, with this cursed gift of immortality.

\--

He finds it near impossible, to search the home of the boy who was sold. His parents have now sent him to the Overseers, and in any case, Corvo cannot question them.

Corvo finds their home, a tiny, basement apartment, with boarded up windows and a door with a terrible lock. Getting inside is not the issue. The problem is that the parents are always home. Work is hard to come by, and even if one leaves, the other remains. Corvo does not want to resort to knocking either of them unconscious, but eventually, he must take action.

One evening, four days into his vigil, he watches the woman enter, a bottle of rum tucked inside her coat. The man has been inside all day. Corvo waits another hour.

He ends up bashing in the lock, trying to disguise his entrance as that of a common, if aggressive, thief. Neither of the occupants are incapacitated with drink, but both of their reaction times are impaired.

Corvo targets the woman first, bringing her down efficiently, her body going lax in his arms. The man starts screaming. Corvo must act fast. He tackles the man to the ground, flipping him onto his stomach so he can choke him out.

Once the man is down as well, Corvo goes about searching their apartment. The neighborhood is undesirable enough, that guards and neighbors may ignore the disturbance entirely, but Corvo cannot rely on a mere assumption being true. He has never seen the couple argue, nor has he heard screams from the adjoining buildings. Three-fourths of the bottle of rum sits on their kitchen table.

Ideally, he’ll find something akin to a bill of sale, a record for how much money they received for their son’s life. But that seems rather optimistic. Those who deal in human bodies with any success are more clever than to leave a trail.

He finds some of the boy’s personal possessions. A few books, a wind up toy. He was not entirely unloved. The exact circumstances of the boy’s conditions here are still cloudy. Corvo leaves the toys behind.

Corvo has no use for their money, or other valuables. But he has to make it look like there was a reason they were attacked. He finds six coins inside the man’s second set of boots. Another one in the woman’s coat. There is little else of value in the apartment. Pity. He must take the coin.

\--

The other boy’s name, the middle-class child with ashy hair and an upturned nose, is Jacob Galion-Fossling. He is ten years old and likes music, numbers, and his mother’s baking.

His mother is a lawyer, his father an electrician.

Bali Fossling practices a profession made possible by Sokolov’s intellect. In the evenings, he pours over technical diagrams, papers written by the great scientist of their age, understanding just enough to recognize there is much he does not know.

Clara Galion stays late in her office, dredging through extra cases that she's taken on. Though her darling son has been found, the family is now woefully in debt. She wants him to return to lessons, to be afforded every opportunity. And so, she works long hours.

Corvo waits until the boy is in his classes, the parents both at work, before slipping into their second story apartment. He searches Galion’s desk, finding a stack of envelopes, tied with twine. They are from the investigators she hired over the six weeks Jacob was missing. Three of them in total.

One “detective” is clearly quite inept, finding little in the way of tangible evidence. He tried to track material objects, footprints, threads from the boy’s clothes.

The second investigator is a touch cleverer, talking to those who live and die by the docks. The transients who scrape by on information, selling to the bidders who come their way. Usually, it's competing shipping companies, but sometimes the find a much more tasty morsel of gossip.

McKintosh Fisheries comes up again. At least their crates do. There was a man with a cart, talking to Jacob. One crate from McKintosh. Three more unmarked boxes. But otherwise, no one knows the man who spoke to the boy that day.

The third investigator writes in code. Corvo can't make sense of his scrawl. Either he lost his wits, or values privacy very much.

It is unlikely that Galion will touch the letters again, caring now only that her child has been returned. Corvo slips the coded letter into his jacket’s inside pocket. The rest of the stack, he returns.

He searches the boy’s room. Perhaps he can find something that links him to the other children. They are all between the ages of six and fourteen. But, otherwise, Corvo can find no common thread.

In addition to his piano lessons, Jacob attends painting classes, every other week. An easel stands in one corner of his neatly appointed room. Corvo cannot tell if the painting stretched across the canvas is new, or was begun before the boy was taken.

At first, Corvo thinks it is a city skyline, the night an inky black. Stars the only filtered light overhead. But his mind is playing tricks on him, because it is not the horizon at all. Corvo looks at the painting a second time.

It is the sea, filled to bursting with small, black fish.

He has only seen something like it once before.


	3. .three

A foreign consciousness stands at the threshold of the Void.

The Outsider knows at once that it is Corvo Attano.

In the years that have passed between them, not once has the Outsider looked, searched for the one he once held most dear. He has not watched his Corvo. A penance put upon himself. Corvo did not want the gift that the Outsider forced upon him, and the Outsider would force nothing more.

Yet, when the Outsider feels the mesh of Corvo’s presence, seeping into his realm, he prepares himself with a clammy nervousness unbefitting of his station as a God.

What has driven Corvo to such an act? A violation of the silence they have maintained these past years? Outsider is uncertain.

He has the power to cast Corvo out, pin him down to the mortal world like an insect in the entomologist’s box. The bindings may not last forever, but the Outsider is certain he can shut Corvo out for now. But, in all honesty, the Outsider has no desire to shun Corvo from the Void.

Not now, not likely ever.

Because, still, he aches.

This is a judgement day that the Outsider has long anticipated. Almost hoped for. He crosses his hands behind his back, and waits.

Corvo materializes, stepping through the Void with eerily silent feet. Dark fog swirls around his legs, his arms, his broad shoulders, but otherwise, he looks quite unlike the last time the Outsider saw him.

Though the mask covers his face, his body looks human now, intact. With the same warm, brown skin that the Outsider remembers, solid hands and a barrel chest. The monstrosity has been tamed.

In any and all possible forms, the Outsider would find him beautiful.

Corvo keeps his hood over his hair, the fabric casting shadows across the mask. When he speaks, it is without the movement of his lips or tongue, emanating from deep inside his chest.

“What are you doing?” Corvo demands answers, but his question is not yet specific.

The Outsider tips his head, “Watching, waiting. What else can I do?”

“Do not lie to me,” Corvo hisses, rage coursing through his body.

The Outsider can feel it now. The vibrations Corvo tries to keep at bay. It takes all his self control to hold this form, one that humans would find tolerable. Underneath, Corvo is still something beyond the comprehension of mortals. A mix of magic and man that the Outsider should have never made. Corvo is such a stunning construction.

“Then ask a better question,” the Outsider prompts.

With the mask covering his face, Corvo’s expression is unreadable. But his voice tells the Outsider much.

“The children, the ones Tavish found.”

Why would Corvo think the Outsider has anything to do with the children? Yes, one of his Marked spurred a chain of events that lead to their discovery. But, perhaps they would have been found another way. Or maybe they would have met a fate more grim. He does not change the narratives of men with such precision. A long time ago, he tried. It did not work.

“What of them?”

“Do not play stupid.”

The Outsider smiles, finding Corvo’s lack of composure in the matter utterly disarming. A relief, really, that they have anything at all to discuss, besides the Outsider’s past trespasses.

The Outsider has missed Corvo so…

“I know of the children. It was difficult news to ignore. But they are found now. What do we have to discuss?”

“One of the boys,” Corvo’s rage has already begun to cool. The bulges underneath his jacket settle as he regains control of himself. “There was a painting in his room. A painting of you.”

The Outsider has knowledge of the boy in question. The little rich one in the lot of orphans. “The painting is not of me.”

“Yes it is. I've only ever seen black fish, like those, here in the Void.”

“And I suppose you've seen all the ocean’s depths, to which you can compare?”

The anger rises again, the buttons of Corvo’s coat straining as he tries to maintain control. “And I should assume a boy of ten has seen all the vastness the sea has to offer?”

“Or he has a lovely imagination,” the Outsider will not admit as much out loud, but the painting is a curious thing.

Corvo undoes the top button of his coat, pulling open the flap, “There is more.” He draws out an envelope. “About the girls still in the care of the Watch. At least two of them have dreamt of drowning. They make the guards nervous. And then,” Corvo holds the letter towards the Outsider, “this?”

The Outsider takes the letter from Corvo’s hand, unfolding the parchment to read the text. Scrawled across the page is some sort of mangled symbolism, one that the Outsider cannot immediately parse. “The letter from the boy’s mother?”

“From one of the investigators she hired,” Corvo explains.

Though it is not a pattern the Outsider has seen before, it takes him only moments to understand. “He does not think it was the Fisheries. Another company makes the crates.”

Corvo snatches up the letter from the Outsider’s hands. Without a word, he turns away.

“You could at least thank me,” the Outsider wishes it sounded more callous. But now that Corvo has used him, the Outsider will soon be discarded. Perhaps for many decades more.

Corvo hesitates, though he knows well enough how to throw himself from the Void. He knows how to make this wretched encounter end. “Have you been visiting children?”

“It has been more than a decade since I have spoken with anyone. My shrines are not as popular as they used to be,” the Outsider smiles. Devotion comes like tides. “The Overseers must be particularly efficient, as of late.”

“If I find out…”

“What then, dear Corvo,” the Outsider winces, at least Corvo is still turned away, the dark lines of his jacket impassive in the face of the Outsider’s trepidation. “What will you do, if you find out I was involved?”

“I'll learn how to kill a god.” This time, Corvo speaks with his mouth, quiet, appologetic, “I do not mean that.”

It doesn't matter, either way. For all his powers now, Corvo still cannot touch the Outsider. One day, his eternity will end, but not by Corvo’s hand. “We all have our role to play. Perhaps destroying me will be yours.”

Corvo steps off the slate edge.

\--

Children are resistant, clever, and less afraid than adults assume.

Concealing himself in the City Watch station, where they keep the girls, is easy enough. Corvo waits, perched up upon the wooden beams running the length of the ceiling. He keeps his body as flat as possible, reducing the shadow he casts along the ground. He bends and breaks his bones, twists the fog, to bring his physical footprint down to virtually nothing.

Guardspeople walk in and out, tending to the girls. They are trying to find orphanages to take them, or charitable families. But in the end, if lodgings are not found, they may be released without supervision, cast out onto the streets. The Watch doesn’t have the facilities or food to keep them here much longer.

Corvo only needs a few minutes alone with one of them. He wants to prevent a scene, and worries that if he tries to visit them as a group, one or more of them will give him away. And so, he waits, hoping for an opportunity.

Children, being who they are, always find a way to search out trouble.

A girl of no more than seven slips away when the guards are changing shifts. She shoves her tiny body between the bars. They're spaced too far apart to hold her.

Her hair is cut short around her ears, pitch black and glossy, despite her thin frame, which suggests years of malnutrition. One of the other girls, still locked inside the cell, hisses at Hartha to come back. She’s going to get in trouble.

Turning on her heels, Hartha leans forward, bending at her waist, to mock the other girl, “We’re already in prison.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” the other girl whines.

But Hartha has heard enough. Apparently, she’s getting out, with or without her compatriots. Corvo can’t help but smile. He wonders if she gave her kidnappers as much trouble as she obviously heaps upon the other girls. She’s just perfect.

Hartha presses her body close against the opposite wall, trying to hide in shadows. As she moves, she makes too much noise for her size, but it’s an admirable effort. Corvo follows her from the rafters as she huddles from room to room. Listening carefully, she’s good at avoiding the Watch, staying far enough away that her noisiness doesn’t become an issue.

When she disappears into the wall, slipping into a ventilation shaft, Corvo doesn’t worry. He’s already determined where the shaft terminates outside. He’ll be able to pick her up when she emerges.

It takes her longer than it should to find her way to the surface. Corvo waits for her, propped up on a barrel of salted eel, still waiting to be brought inside. A donation, from the cannery, to try and help feed the girls. Corvo thinks it a little cruel. He never did develop a taste for eel.

Hartha finally crawls outside, her hands dirty and raw from hoisting herself through the interior of the building. Scrambling to her feet, she takes no notice of Corvo, though he has done little to conceal himself.

Swooping in, Corvo grabs her about the waist. He bundles her to his chest, covering her mouth with one hand. “Do not scream,” he speaks with his mouth, hoping it might calm her down, though he knows full well how scared she must be. “I am not here to hurt you.”

Hartha, survivor that she is, bites down on his hand with the full force of her jaw. Her teeth cut through the barrier of Corvo’s illusion, until she’s biting down on bone. She must realize that he is no man, her body going pathetically limp for a moment.

“Do not scream,” Corvo tries not to frighten her more. “I only wish to talk, and then I will let you go.”

Her vicious little incisors are still around his hand. She nods without letting up the pressure.

Corvo puts her feet back on the ground, untangling his arm from around her waist. Finally, she concedes, unclenching her jaw and letting his hand free.

Crouching down, Corvo meets her at her level. He’s left his mask on for this. It cannot possibly be more frightening than what she’s been through already. “I’m sorry I grabbed you,” he apologizes, keeping his hands to himself now. “But do you understand why I couldn’t let you shout?”

Her dark eyes are still full of fire, “Because you’re not real. You’re magic.” She’s very clever.

“Yes,” Corvo admits, “something like that.”

Hartha hasn’t run, and she hasn’t screamed. So Corvo hopes for the best.

“I’m trying to find the people who took you, and the others. I want to make sure they don’t take any more children,” he explains. “Do you remember anything? Or have any of the other girls talked about their capture?”

Frowning, Hartha clenches her hands into fists. “They took me while I was sleeping. I was so angry,” she seethes, “I could have fought them, if I were awake.”

Corvo laughs, “I’m sure you would have.” Hartha is very charming, in her open aggression and self-confidence.

“So I don’t remember anything,” she looks at her feet, then back up. “But,” she shakes her head, “what do I get if I tell you?”

In his pocket, Corvo still has the coin he took from the parents who sold their boy. “I have coin. But I’ll give it to you now.” Reaching inside his breast pocket, he takes out everything he stole from the basement apartment, pushing it into Hartha’s cupped hands. “It’s up to you, if you wish to tell me something more. But I want to help.”

Hartha keeps the money balled up in her hands. “Some of the girls, they would cry at night. I heard them talking. The two of them. They’re having the same dream.”

Corvo read about these dreams in Tavish’s notes. If the Outsider lied to him about his involvement...

“In the dream, they are being smothered, drowned, like...wet rags over their nose and mouth. Everything is dark. And there are fish. Black ones.”

Corvo waits to make sure Hartha has nothing more to say, before asking his question. “But you did not have the dream?”

Hartha shakes her head, ‘no.’ “Only those two ever had them. I heard others tell them the dreams were silly. But those two, they were afraid.”

Corvo asks her more about the girls who dream.

One is called Minnow, the other is Ruth. Minnow is very pretty, she’s turning thirteen soon. She wants to stay with the City Watch. She doesn’t want to live with a family. She thinks that maybe, she’s almost old enough now to work, so she’ll never need to live in someone else’s home. Ruth is younger, nine, with light hair and blue eyes. She was very ill at first, when she was taken, but she’s better now.

Corvo wishes he had more to give her, but Hartha already has all his coin. He thanks her, and wishes her luck, wherever she may go. But Hartha has questions of her own.

“So, you work for the Outsider?”

“No,” Corvo insists.

She looks perplexed, “So, there are other gods?”

Corvo must admit, “No, none that I have ever known.”

“You’re very strange, for a demon.” And with that, she leaves.

He’s not a demon. But it makes little difference if that is what she thinks.

\--

The stolen boys prove more difficult to approach.

Those left behind, with no family to speak of, have been placed into the care of the Abbey. From the eleven boys the Abby has received, Corvo knows not all of them will live. Some of them may be lucky enough to “fail the trial,” and, like the girls, be released back onto the streets from which they were taken. Others will be disappeared, later in their “training.”

Corvo’s thoughts on the Abbey have always been heretical, but not for the reasons the Abbey assumed when he was alive. Even now, long after his death, they whisper about Corvo Attano, who fell on his knees before the Outsider, begging for power and favor. The rumors did not cease, even after Corvo could once again bare his hand. After Delilah stole his Mark.

At some point, talking about him will no longer be in fashion. That day cannot come soon enough.

He enters the Office of the High Overseer through an open, third floor window. Whoever has been assigned this office is careless enough to leave the shutters open, after he has gone to bed. Perched on the windowsill, Corvo waits in silence, making sure the occupant is truly gone. His lamp is left lit.

Where the boys are being held, Corvo isn’t quite certain, though the basement seems as good a guess as any. He’s managed to find little information about them, other than the records from the Watch confirming their transfer here. Written in the margins of the official report, one of the sergeants wrote that she hates seeing the boys go. But when the Overseers asked for the male children, the Watch was in no position to deny the request.

The high, vaulted ceilings of the Office are so needlessly vulgar, it makes Corvo’s stomach churn. Gold glit around picture frames and outwardly austere vases, placed upon imported darkwood tables.

Corvo is in little position to judge the wealth of the Order. His impressive skill as a young man vaulted him from the petty middle-class of Karnaca to one of the most notable men in all the Isles, even if that had never been his intention. But, that does not change the fact the bank of the Emperor rivals that of the Abbey. And, in the end, it is coin that will keep the two factions in conflict. That is the reality of the situation.

He is careful to avoid the Overseers who are still awake, going about their rounds, chatting in the hallways, and sneaking off for encounters best kept hidden. When three men come stumbling down the hall, clumsily trying to hide a flask of grain alcohol between them, Corvo dips into an open office to keep from being spotted.

Leaving the door open, he can still hear them in the otherwise quiet hall. They are trying to find their dormitory, but have gotten lost along the way.

One of the men pushes another against the wall, caging him in with his larger frame. They’ve misplaced their masks, ruddy faces burning bright in the lamplight overhead.

“Don’t care about finding a bed,” the larger one huffs, “want you right here.”

Corvo cannot see the face of the Overseer who has his back against the wall, but he can hear his raspy, tin-can voice, and the sweet way he laughs, “Then do it already.”

“We’re going to get caught,” the third whines. The tremor in his voice proves he is no less intoxicated, but a good deal younger than the other two.

“Eyer is right,” the pinned man concedes. “Besides,” the bravado returns to his voice, “want the two of you to stuff me from both ends.”

“Void…”

Corvo waits for their messy footsteps to retreat before slipping back out of the office and continuing down the hall.

He Blinks between the overwrought lighting fixtures hung over the staircase to descend from the third floor to the second, then the second to the first. But he will have to move along the ground to make his way to the separate basement stairwell.

The nightwatchman has dozed off at his station, an open folio beneath his fingertips. Corvo does his best not to disturb his slumber, as he lifts away his keyring.

From the top of the basement stairs, he can hear at least two Overseers in conversation, along with the slick sound of cards being shuffled. They’re trying to pass the hours while they wait. One of them mentions the boys, asking how much longer they’ll be housed in the Office.

“Nother couple of weeks, I heard. Before they decide who has the right disposition.”

“Figure all of them should be given the chance.”

One of them deals out, snapping cards down on the table. “Do you remember your parents?”

A long pause.

“Yeah. Mama washed clothes. And…” he thinks better of sharing more.

Corvo will have to dispatch them both, if he hopes to sneak by undetected. Creeping further down the stairs, he manages to catch sight of of them. With their masks still on, it’s difficult to say anything about their features.

He waits for one of them to stand, stretching his hands above his head and groaning deep with satisfaction. Scratching his stomach, he turns away, and Corvo sees his opportunity.

Blinking behind the still-seated Overseer, Corvo chokes him quickly, waiting for his body to go limp. Before he can slide off of his chair, Corvo Blinks again, closing in on the standing one and knocking him out just as quick.

As far as Corvo can tell, there aren’t any additional guards on the floor. While he stays alert, he uses the time he has to look for evidence, anything that could tell him more about the boys.

He manages to find the crate where the few belongings they had between the eleven of them have been stashed.

There’s not much. The clothing they were wearing; not enough shoes for the number of boys they took; a hair comb, a pocket knife; a small, bound book. He takes the knife, turning it over in his hands and looking for any identifying marks. Finding nothing of distinction, he nonetheless keeps the bauble.

Flipping through the pages of the book, he finds scratched notes from a boy. A list of names, things he wants to find, mostly food, but some cloth, a new belt. Some of the items have been crossed out, new objects added to the end of the list in a different ink but the same hand.

And then:

__  
Hands at the throat  
Wet and warm with life  
Reaching inside to clear the breath  
Stop holding  
I can feel bone 

_He reaches into my open mouth_  
And I cough up tar  
That swims away

It’s the same dream. Corvo is certain of it. The smothering Hartha did not feel, but the other girls spoke of. It is the same dream, and it reeks of the Outsider.

Inside the front cover of the book, the name “Colin” is printed in neat type. While it is unlike the scrawl in later pages, Corvo is certain this must be the boy’s name.

Pulling off his mask, he exchanges his for one of the unconscious Overseer’s, trying to obscure his identity. He doesn’t bother changing clothes, needing only to fool the one boy, who is unlikely to notice the strangeness of his now out-of-fashion attire.

Corvo makes his way to the row of cells, still keeping out of sight. They have kept the boys separated, each with his own bed in a tiny square of a room. The Overseers must not want them to speak to each other. All are silent, perhaps asleep.

“Colin,” he hopes to rouse the right boy.

“Mm,” comes a voice from one of the cells, “yes?”

Corvo hurries to the cell, hoping to avoid detection from the other boys. Using the key he lifted earlier, he opens Colin’s cell, quietly closing the door behind him.

Colin sits upright on his cot, his large, round eyes still full of sleep. He is perhaps twelve years old. His hair is cropped close to his skull, and in the darkness of the room, he is obscured in shadow. He pulls his knees close to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself, trying to make himself small, unnoticed.

Corvo holds out Colin’s journal, open to the right page. “Explain,” he hopes that Colin has not been questioned about the passage already. Though the cell is dark, too dark for Colin to properly read his own script, he must know the page by heart.

“I-I, told the others. I didn’t...” Letting go of his legs, he sticks them out so they fall over the edge of the cot and towards the floor. Unlike many of the children Corvo has seen, he is not emaciated. But he is tall and lean as he moves from childhood-proper into his youth. “It was just a poem. I like writing.” He puts his feet flat to the floor.

“Where did you see this, feel it?” Corvo pushes, wanting to hear about the boy’s dream.

“Please, I only wrote it down. I haven’t seen anything,” Colin stresses.

Trying a different tactic, Corvo leads the boy, “I know you’re having dreams.”

“I’m not!” the boy snaps back, loud enough to wake the others in adjacent cells. “I’m really not, why won’t anyone believe me?”

“The Outsider, did he show you this?”

Colin’s eyes go wide. His voice is steady, sure, “The Outsider has never visited me. It was not a dream. I only wrote the poem, because I wanted to.”

Corvo lacks the poise to make the boy relent. When he leaves, he does not take the book with him. Colin flips through the pages of his own writing, as if his words are very precious.

Corvo plans to escape through the front door, walking out like a man who belongs here. Exchanging the Overseer’s mask for his own, he heads back up the stairs, expecting to find the watchman still asleep.

As he reaches the landing, he hears voices up ahead. One must be the junior Overseer from the front desk, roused from his slumber. The other voice he recognizes, despite the hoarseness that sometimes comes with age.

“I’m sorry, Lady Protector, my keys must be somewhere here,” the Overseer scrambles for what Corvo already knows he will not find.

The Royal Protector waves him off, “No matter. I do not need to enter their cells. I only wish to speak to a few of the boys.”

“The High Overseer did not leave instructions.”

“Is that so?” Kyra asks, her voice full of mocking disdain. “You should go fetch him, then.” Her low-heeled boots tap against the wood, until they are muffled by the carpet.

Corvo retreats down the stairs. He will have to hide until her business is concluded. She will see the unconscious bodies of the two Overseers, then run back upstairs to alert the watchman.

Tucking himself in underneath the staircase, behind an overturned table, Corvo waits for Kyra to leave. But when she sees the bodies strewn about the floor, she merely sighs. Another inconvenience.

She kneels at the side of one guard, placing her ungloved hand against his mouth and checking for warm breath. Once she confirms they are both alive, she nudges one of them in the side with her boot. “If you’re still here, come out. Otherwise, I will find you.”

Corvo starts to phase from pseudo-flesh back into fog, hoping to flatten himself against the wall and out of sight.

Kyra is too clever, and Corvo has long suspected that she has known of his existence. Though Emily and Wyman both went to great lengths to conceal Corvo’s presence in the Tower, when they were still alive. Corvo has not been in the same room as the Royal Protector since the heir’s coronation. And even then, it was at a distance.

Kyra’s attention snaps to the staircase, almost as soon as Corvo starts to phase, manipulating his physical form. Pulling the table aside with one hand, her shortblade is in the other, Kyra exposes Corvo to the light. From the shock of it, Corvo stutters, his excess limbs flailing out in defense, knocking Kyra over so he can make his escape.

“I KNEW IT!” she shouts, trying to grab on to Corvo as he vaults over her, rushing back towards the stairs. Getting ahold of his trousers, she tries to pull him back, nearly laughing when Corvo slips through her fingers.

Free from her grip, Corvo refuses to run like a frightened animal. Her laughter has succeeded in hurting his pride. He should be more concerned that he was discovered at all, but she was not chosen as his successor because of a lack of skill.

“I’d recognize that mask anywhere,” she claims, leaping to her feet. Though she is now well into her fifties, Kyra Blake is still trim and athletic. A full head shorter than Corvo, she has a dancer’s build, not a soldier’s. But he cannot deny that she has been skilled in his position. Her position. Theirs. “You’re Corvo Attano,” this time, her voice betrays her awe.

“He would be nearly a hundred years old, now,” Corvo tries to argue.

“I wouldn’t be very good at my job, if I didn’t know.”

“What is it you think you know?”

Her smile returns, “That Corvo Attano made a pact with the Outsider,” her eyes flick to Corvo’s Marked hand, “and got eternal life in return.”

“You’re wrong,” Corvo stands very still.

“Our Lady Emily, First of Her Name, Empress of the Isles, was very skilled in subterfuge,” she looks at Corvo’s mask, into the eyes behind it. “So, naturally, I had to be better. You’re a tough act to follow.”

Corvo can’t help but resent her familiarity with him. He says nothing. Best not to give her more ammunition.

“Fine, fine. But,” Kyra taps her finger against her bottom lip. Her nails are painted deep brown, as to blend in with her skin. “If you are here. You and I must be after the same thing. I assumed the Outsider was involved. But now I know for certain.”

“I am not a servant of the Outsider.”

Kyra does not push him further, “Fine, fine.”

“What is it you are doing here?” Corvo asks, providing a question of his own.

“Unlike some, I am not a heretic. All those years, you moved in shadow when it came to the Abbey. But I can walk the Overseer’s halls as one devoted to the Order. I asked the High Overseer if I could question the boys. And so,” she flourishes with her hand, “I am here.”

Corvo turns to leave. She is mocking him.

“You should come see me,” Kyra insists, “I have information you may find beneficial, if our goals are aligned.”

Over the years Kyra has been Royal Protector, Corvo has never seen evidence that she would betray the Crown, act against the interests of Emily, or the heir. Corvo would not have let her maintain her position, had he reason to doubt her. But being this close, for the first time, she itches him all over.

“Perhaps...Lady Protector,” Corvo has many questions. But there is one he has always, always wished to ask. One that Emily could not possibly answer. But Kyra might, “The Emperor, do they know as well?”

“No,” Kyra does not dance around her answer. “Lady Emily and Wyman’s intentions were clear enough. Even if they never spoke to me of this. I doubt the Emperor even knew of Lady Emily’s association with the Outsider, save for rumours. Much less yours.”

Corvo heads up the stairs.

“I will not let this touch them.”


	4. .four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content notes: this chapter includes the off-screen death of a child. their dead body is described in moderate detail.

The Fisheries are not to blame. The Outsider knows this much. It is only their crates, sturdy, wooden boxes, made specifically for packing ice and shipping fresh, unsalted fish for later processing and consumption, that carry the guilt of the children’s bodies crammed inside. The boxes found in the belly of the ship only smell of sharp, dry pine.

The Outsider instead turns his attention to the lumber mills. Operating unregulated in Gristol’s interior, the mills fell trees by the hundreds every year. When flora are already in short supply. 

Massive machines that run on modifications of Sokolov’s genius, slicing up planks into various sizes. The longest, thickest boards are transferred to the dockyards, to be chemically treated with waterproofing by the shipbuilders. Smaller, high quality segments of wood are allotted to artisans, who pay a premium for each pound. The ground up dust and splintered chips are bought in bulk, used for insulation in shoddily built homes, masquerading as something fit for the middle classes. Farmers also use the mulch for animal bedding. Construction companies sturdy up mud-slick building sites by churning in the coarser chips.

Middling quality boards, too small for ships, but not fine enough for specialists, are transferred to Jakobson & Yale. They make inexpensive, firmly jointed tables, single use barrels held together with nails and glue, and crates, built to order.

There is something there. The Outsider knows there is, because there is an empty space on the property, beyond his reach. A hole in time, in being, that he cannot penetrate. Situated in a back office at Jakobson & Yale, behind a locked door, and a magic barrier that prevents the Outsider from entering.

It is just the sort of location where the Outsider might expect a shrine. Tucked away, secret, and yet at once in plain sight and accessible by men. There are many such alcoves across the Isles. Sometimes the Outsider visits them, if he has the inclination.

Those who worship him would continue their praise and lamentations, regardless of his presence. They are simply people who wish to believe in a power greater than themselves. If the Abbey were more clever, they would construct a better deity than the one they vilify. No matter that theirs would be a false god. That doesn’t make a bit of difference, as far as humans are concerned.

The Isles worship the Outsider in secret, because the Abbey is not clever enough to give them a substitute for devotion. So there are many shrines, and just one god. But this altar, hidden away at a mediocre building firm, is not for him.

Though he cannot see into the room, the Outsider tries to use the shrine as a vector, projecting himself towards the whalebone talisman he is sure must be locked inside. Reaching out, he tries to curl his fingers around the rune, use it as an anchor to drag himself into the mortal realm. The Void itself is always attached to his heels. He will never be free of it again.

And he can feel it, the crude magic behind the barrier calling out to him. The magic of humans is always rough, untamed. His own powers are not so very different. He has only refined them over time. But at their core, the Outsider’s abilities are no less primal than that of men. There will always be a gap between himself and the Leviathans he is meant to emulate.

The little one.

The last.

Not yet, not yet the last, but someday.

The Outsider gets close, straining through the defenses set up around the illicit shrine. Whoever built this has knowledge beyond what a human should possess. The protections erected around the altar try to beat the Outsider back, forcing him to dodge and dive, try to squeeze himself through a narrow opening, before a gate slams in his face.

Cornered now, unable to find a way forward, he retreats, finding comfort in the Void.

Strange, so strange.

He has never encountered such specific hostility before. While his knowledge of the comings and goings of banal human concerns is never complete, he has no experience with active wards designed specifically to prevent him from entering.

But, perhaps, he has not considered looking for such barriers.

It’s a strange thing, being melded with the Void. Utterly terrifying in the first few hundred years, when the Outsider could still remember the name he was called as a boy. When the whales’ songs did not yet sound like comforting lullabies, but horrific shrieks. When he still vomited up the black bile that kept him animated, connected. The power of this vast, unknowable place filled up the empty spaces inside of him, wound its way around his bones. Now, he is able to ignore the amalgamation that he is, existing in an endless liminality, but there is still a strangeness that the molecules he yet shares with his mortal self cannot comprehend.

He uses the Void to search the Isles for places he is not wanted.

There is another shrine, like the one in Dunwall. He can feel it now, pushing against the Void, causing a tension that should not be there. In the magic’s attempt to keep him out, to build a wall against his power, the shrine gives itself away. The barrier is too thick. The Void distends and stretches around the foreign object lodged in its flesh.

The Outsider cannot see the altar, but he knows where it is. The snowy north of Tyvia.

Yaro is known for its warmth, despite the near-year round chill. The city, more an outpost, really, is filled with bright, bustling taverns. The residents find it cheaper to siphon the heat from a few communal buildings, than keep furnace fires lit in the home twenty-four hours a day.

They distill vodka from pears and mix the alcohol with fresh juice to give it a subtle, pleasant flavor. There is little to boast about when drinking the liquor plain. It is better to enjoy your life, than to suffer.

People hurry from building to building, bundled up in heavy cloth and thick fur, coiled around their necks. Their cheeks are bright and eyes clear, though their noses run like faucets, dampening their scarves with fluid. Jewelry is a liability, frozen metal against bare skin is rarely present. All genders wear their hair long, as to cover their ears.

The docks bring shipments from the south. They send back northern fishes, that fetch a higher price because of the danger of going out upon the ice. The Outsider is uncertain if the taste enhances their popularity, or if it is only the scarcity that makes the little net-caught smelts desirable. The people of Yaro are trappers as well, harvesting rabbit, wolves, and miniature wild ox, for leather hide and soft fur. They salt the meat and keep it for themselves, thinking it too much a piece of their heritage to sell.

Three quarters of a mile from the edge of the settlement, just within the first steps of dense woodlands, an open-mouthed cave is protected by dense thatch. While the trained eyes of experienced trappers would recognize the buildup of brush at the cave’s entrance unnatural, they have not been curious enough to disturb the amateurish camouflage.

The trappers talk amongst themselves about the cave, the six or seven times they pass it in a season. They say a witch lives there, one who speaks to the Outsider almost daily. She lays on her back, naked on the cold stone, and takes his cock, hour after hour, until she is raw and sore. But the god blesses her. She must be over two-hundred years old.

The Outsider would find their gossip funny. Except he knows he is not the one fucking her. The same shield that protects the shrine at Jakobson & Yale repels him again. The sorcery involved is too particular for their similarities to be by chance.

He has to find a way inside.

\--

Corvo visits the Royal Protector, in the quarters he used to call his own.

She leaves the window open for three nights in a row. Obvious enough, that she is waiting for him.

In her nightly routine, she bids the Emperor goodnight, as they retire to their chambers. She teases them, mercilessly, having known the heir since birth. It matters little now, that they rule the Isles. To Kyra, they will always be a child, dressed beautifully and hauntingly quiet in their parents’ arms.

Two hand-picked guards stand watch over the Emperor’s door, allowing Kyra to take her leave. She washes and dresses for bed, before spending an hour behind her desk, reading reports or for pleasure, he braided hair pinned up high off her neck, tracing over lines of text with her nails.

On the third night since their last encounter, Corvo Blinks through her window, landing directly on the carpet in front of her desk. To Kyra’s credit, she is not surprised. She is skilled enough to best anyone who is not Corvo Attano. If Corvo wanted her dead, she would have passed years ago.

She beams brightly at him, taking her feet off of the desk. “You came!” Dropping her book into her lap, she claps her hands together.

Corvo says nothing, appraising her from behind his mask. Her body language has always been loose and casual. It was a prank, after all, that won her his title. There is joy in every movement, but that doesn’t preclude deception, too.

“A man of few words, I know. Void, I’m starting to believe all the stories about you are true.” Standing, she walks to her safe, spinning the combination. “Right to the point then,” she comments. “I’ve found some information.” The safe opens. “Actionable information.”

From the safe, she pulls a keyring. The key fits into a locked box under her desk. From the desk, she produces a stack of papers. Carbon-copies from merchants and banks across Gristol. Flipping through the pages, she finds the one she was looking for.

“Those crates the kids were found inside. They don’t trace back to the Fisheries. But there’s also no record of them having gone missing. That shipment was never ordered in the first place.” She holds out the records for Corvo to take.

He declines, standing stone still in front of her.

Shrugging, she continues, “but I found a similar shipment. Same dimensions for the boxes. Paid in full, up front. No name on the paperwork, though,” she rattles on. “In any case, the boxes are already enroute to Yaro in Tyvia….I’m hoping they’re not full of kids. But I was thinking, maybe you could head them off.”

“Head them off?” Corvo finally speaks.

“Can’t you beat the ships there? I don’t know,” she bites her bottom lip, “Warp to Yaro, or run really fast across the water? Or, something? I don’t know the extent of what you can do.”

Corvo has not left Dunwall since his death. Even when Emily traveled, he remained behind. While he has no sense of anything tethering him to the city, he likewise lacks any sort of arcane powers to speed his travels across the water.

“No.”

Kyra covers her face with her hand. “I cannot….I cannot leave Dunwall. You know this. I must stay with the Emperor. I have no one else to ask.” She shakes her head, “You were there, at the High Overseer’s Office, you want to protect these children too. Or the Outsider-”

“I told you,” Corvo interrupts, “I do not work for him.”

Sitting down, Kyra leans back in her chair, her eyes wide, “I cannot leave. So, I am telling you. But I cannot force you to act. And I will not beg.”

Corvo does not expect her to.

“There is another thing….one of the girls has disappeared from the City Watch. ‘Minnow,’ the others called her. And possibly...two of the boys have been moved. But I have only heard rumors. I do not have eyes I am confident in within the Office. The High Overseer is more accessible to me than he ever was to you, but that does not mean he is forthcoming with information.”

“Was Colin one of the boys?”

Kyra doesn’t appear to put much stock in the boy’s name, “I have only heard that two of them were transferred. It may have been for the Trials. It may have been for some other reason.”

Lacking any additional questions, Corvo turns to leave. But he cannot help but linger on the details of the room. In the thirty-five years Kyra has been Royal Protector, she has made the title her own. This room, her own. So while he recognizes the sturdy-built furniture, and curtains that match those throughout the Tower, he cannot help but dwell on the pieces of her woven through the quarters. The ivory sheets, the fine-cut glass decanter, filled with brandy, the sketchbook, open upon her bedside table.

“My sister’s drawings,” Kyra explains, noticing how Corvo’s gaze lingers. “When she fills a book, she sends it to me.” The pictures are of fantastic creatures that Corvo assumes never existed, other than in Kyra’s sister’s mind. Dragons with wide wings, oxen as big as houses with gleaming tusks, faeries with idyllic faces.

“Lord Protector,” Kyra draws him back, “you say you do not serve the Outsider.”

“I do not,” he asserts.

“But you know him. He is known to you?”

“Of course,” no one can deny the reality of the drowned god. It would be foolish to suggest otherwise. Kyra knows Emily was Marked, even if she was never told. Never saw the brand with her own eyes.

“What is he like?” she asks, with an awed innocence unbefitting of her age.

Corvo hesitates, “Both more and less than men assume.”

\--

He will have to travel to Yaro as any mortal would. By ship.

While the order of crates has already departed the harbor, Corvo has no choice but to lag behind. He can only hope he is not too late. He hopes, too, that he doesn’t find the missing children in the frozen north. He hopes that they are safe, that they escaped on their own, found families to take them in. Anything but being packed into those crates.

Checking the harbor docket, there are three hours yet until the next boat to Tyvia. Not to Yaro directly, but to Caltan. From there, he can either board a second ship, or find a faster way to travel over land. It is four days before another boat bound direct to Yaro.

It should be simple enough to steal aboard, hide himself in the lower decks. A few days at sea will not be so terrible. And he will make haste, once they land.

But as Corvo waits on the docks, he feels the pull of the arcane, unlike anything he’s encountered before. Spiking pains along his spine, drilling into bone. He has felt so very little since his death, that the sudden burst of sensation floors him, causing his body to break apart. He feels the spread of fog, trying to run away from his skeleton, breaking the confines of his skin. Clawing back, he tries to regain his composure. And just as soon as it has come, the moment passes.

Something is wrong with him. With the Void.

Corvo scrambles to connect with the Void, to drag himself through the permeable barrier in between planes of existence. It’s still a difficult feat for him to accomplish on his own. When the Outsider beckoned him, so many years prior, entering the Void was as easy as waking from sleep.

If he finds a shrine, the transition is easier. He can step through to the Void uninvited. But with his head spinning, he cannot recall where the nearest altar lies. All he knows is that he must enter the Void, now, now, now. It is a matter of self-preservation, before he is broken apart again.

And somehow, in his desperation, Corvo finds a way, falling onto the slate. Not smooth, as it should be, but jagged mountains of rock on all sides. The Void is somehow different now. 

When he pushes himself to his feet, Corvo looks out upon the expanse of rock. The platforms in front of him are uneven and menacing, protruding forward like sharp teeth. The Void was never particularly….welcoming. But there were always platforms upon which mortals could walk. Havens of safety to cross the expanse.

Not an ounce of that sanctuary remains.

The sharp rock cuts through his form, brushing up against his femurs as he walks. His clothing tears as he moves forward, trying to orient himself.

Between each platform is a gap, too far to jump across. But Corvo can Blink, transitioning from platform to platform, but every surface is a field of talons.

“Outsider!” he calls, tired of moving without direction. His pant legs are in tatters, fog leaking out around his feet.

The God fails to materialize, so Corvo presses onward, Blinking across the Void. Slate gives way to rotting wood, soft and yielding beneath his feet. The platforms start crumbling as he traverses the darkening expanse.

Corvo knows enough of the Void to realize it is not actually infinite. If it were, it would swallow up the mortal plane, it would consume the Nothing that lies beyond. So while he feels as if he is standing still, he knows he must be traveling towards an endpoint, a finite edge.

Could it be...the Outsider is not here?

“Corvo,” the voice precedes the presence. A whirl of black fish taking shape as the Outsider phases into a visible, tangible presence. His face is drawn, lips in a thin line. The delicate arch of his eyebrows knit together in frustration. “If you had only stayed still.”

Corvo reaches out to touch him, some meager confirmation that he is real. The thought of it makes Corvo laugh. Of course the Outsider is real. When he pushes, shoving against the God’s chest, the Outsider frowns, offering resistance.

Reaching forward the Outsider wraps his hands around Corvo’s wrists, holding them tightly in his grasp. He does not squeeze hard enough to touch the bone, but Corvo feels exposed, all the same.

“What has happened? What are you doing?” Corvo demands, his laughter dying out.

“Foolish Corvo,” the Outsider’s expression does not change, the glassiness of his eyes shifting with the waters overhead. “The Void is being remade. I have done nothing. Someone is trying to push me out.”

Corvo tries to recoil, but the Outsider holds tight to his wrists a moment more before releasing. The gnarled rock beneath their feet shift, chunks starting to fall away into the depths of the chasm below. Out of instinct, Corvo reaches towards the Outsider, wrapping his arm around his slim waist before Blinking to the next stretch of solid ground.

Silly as it may have been, he couldn’t let the Outsider fall. Though, Corvo is not certain what the consequences would have been.

Once they land, the Outsider pushes Corvo away. He stumbles as he steps, a show of clumsiniess he hasn’t displayed before. The veneer of composure comes crashing down as the Outsider falls to his knees.

Not a moment later, Corvo feels it as well, the pain that ghosted over his body before rising again to the surface. The Mark on his hand glows brightly for a moment, then cuts back out.

The Outsider pushes himself to his feet. His arms shake, but Corvo says nothing on the matter. When the Outsider opens his mouth, his teeth are stained pitch, “There are shrines,” black dribbles from the corner of the Outsider’s mouth. He swallows down, but his teeth are still gray-tinted, “In Dunwall and in Yaro. They are not for me. Someone is building a new god.” He wipes at his mouth.

“Delilah?” Corvo asks. The pain has lessened, for the moment.

“I do not know. Your daughter did not kill her. Emily may have been right, that a prison of Delilah’s own vanity would be a better deterrent. But I cannot see inside the shrines. You must go, Corvo. You must see.”

“And if I refuse?”

The Outsider knows already that Corvo will go. “If you wished to be free, to die, you could have chosen that path long ago.”

\--

Corvo rushes towards Jakobson & Yale, Blinking between streetlamps as long as his magic will hold, leaping to the ground and running, running, when he tries to cast and comes up dry.

He ignores the shouts of concern from passers by. They did not see the magic, no, only a hooded figure running through the streets. It’s early afternoon now, those of the professional and labor classes starting to make their way home along bustling streets.

If he’s struck again by the pain, he may not be able to maintain his acceptable form. Time is running down. More than that, the cycles are unpredictable.

Jakobson & Yale sits on a parcel of land just beyond a lower-middle class residential district. One of the new areas of Dunwall carved out in the fifty years since the Rat Plague reshaped the city. They call it Yaleton now, after the factory. In another hundred years, maybe it will be too expensive a neighborhood for its current residents to stay. But for now, it is filled with millworkers, walking home covered in fine, sweet sawdust.

Corvo makes sure he is not being watched when he Blinks up to land atop the wooden fence that separates the lumberyard from the district. Hopping down, any noise he might make is easily obscured by roaring saws.

The Outsider said the altar is in one of the back offices, away from the main building. Corvo stays concealed behind tall stacks of unprocessed planks as he skirts the perimeter of the yard. While most have already headed home, a smattering of workpeople still walk the yard, wrapping up their tasks for the evening.

Corvo is able to creep along the edges with little difficulty. And, mercifully the searing pain does not return.

There are three doors clustered together at the back of the yard, facing towards the gate, rather than the center of the compound. The building is low, long, and windowless. The Outsider was unable to tell Corvo which door of the three.

All are barred, as Corvo tries each one in turn. There are still too many people around for him to break down the door. And, unfortunately, he's never been much for cracking locks. It simply is not a skill that comes easily to his thick fingers.

Instead, he pushes the boundaries of his ephemeral form. As much as he's been able to manipulate the smoke and ether that make up the majority of his body, he's never quite been able to crush his own bones. Emily was able to turn into pure fog, grinding up every solid remnant of her frame. Corvo, even in death, could never quite manage the trick.

But, maybe he doesn't have to get his bones through, just his fingertips. Reaching forward with his hand, he lets the smoke curl outward. Wispy darkness in the afternoon sun. He forces the fog underneath the narrow gap beneath the door, then focuses on curling it upwards towards the latch. The smoke around his hand grows thin, exposing bleached white bone, the Outsider’s Mark too brilliantly bright. But the trick works, and Corvo can feel the lock come open.

Small mercies.

Also a mercy, perhaps, that he has found the correct door. But not a gift, what he finds inside.

He does not know if the girl in Minnow. The pretty thirteen-year-old who dreamed of fish. But Corvo knows the girl is dead. Recently. The pink is only just fading from her cheeks.

The altar is a mess of hair and blood. Copper singeing Corvo’s nostrils. He has to move the girl’s body. He has to make sure she does not merge with the Void.

The front of her shirt is stiff with blood. They dressed her so prettily for this, in silk, with a silver chain around her neck. He wonders if they knew they failed. Her fingers are all bare.

Corvo cradles her head so it does not roll back, her throat slit from ear to ear. He's as gentle as he can be with the body, laying her across the floor.

Under the body are three runes, the Outsider’s Mark on two. The third is different. The location of the eyes remain the same, but the sharp spokes fanning out from around the center now curve slightly, softening like petals.

Corvo gathers up the runes, tucking them into his coat for safekeeping. Taking the blanket down from the makeshift shrine, he tosses it over the body of the girl. She deserves a proper burial, someone to mourn her loss. And for a moment, Corvo thinks of Hartha, if she knows the dead girl, if she could identify her. But Corvo has no way of finding the barefoot urchin now.

He came here to disrupt the altar, and that he has done.


	5. .five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, blood, vomiting, violence

Corvo vaults back into the Void, understanding a little better now how to reach into the Outsider’s realm. He uses the runes inside his coat to aid his transition, channeling his power through the pleas of the unknown person who hoped to reach their uncaring God through whale bone and precision etching.

The Outsider is there, ready to receive him, an unsightly line of black tar still trailing from his pink lips down to his chin.

In truth, Corvo has always found the Outsider horrifying beautiful. He wishes it were not so.

Reaching forward, Corvo seizes the Outsider by his throat, stretching his hand only enough to hold the Outsider in place. Though he cannot see the scar around the Outsider’s neck, hidden by some vain illusion, Corvo can feel it now under his hand. Long and deep, puffy across the length of his throat. He can feel where the cultists slit the Outsider open, drained him dry.

Like this new usurper has tried with that girl. Like these fiends are likely to try with another child.

“What are they doing?” Corvo hisses.

The Outsider’s face is as impassive as ever, lips slightly parted and eyes open. “What did you find?”

Corvo wishes nothing more in that moment than to pitch the Outsider off the edge of the rotting platform. So heavy and wet is his frustration. “A sacrifice. A girl, split open like a whale. You knew, you knew what I would find,” Corvo accuses.

“If I knew what was behind the door, I would not have needed to send you.”

“Is that so,” Corvo mocks, “you are a God.”

The God, Corvo realizes, for there are no others.

The Outsider’s eyes widen and he reaches to pull Corvo’s hand away from his neck. Corvo refuses to relent. The Outsider need not breathe; there is no danger holding him like this. It only forces the Outsider to stay still, to look Corvo in the eyes. He rubs his thumb against the bob of the Outsider’s apple, feeling as he swallows.

“What does it matter? I did...they are not...many plans are set into motion.” The Outsider regains his cool composure, “None have yet succeeded.”

“But they are close,” Corvo knows. He can feel it. The Outsider does not need to confirm his suspicions. Corvo is as woven into the Void as anyone, save the Outsider himself. “They are close and you let them get this close. Why?”

“You will see to it that they fail.” This time, the Outsider succeeds in wrenching Corvo’s hand away.

“Why did you not tell me sooner?”

But this is how the Outsider has always behaved, waiting for the worst to transpire before sauntering in with a half-resolution. Dropping his petty gifts in Corvo’s lap, only after great atrocities. Expecting Corvo to solve vicious puzzles.

“You did not know,” Corvo realizes.

The accusation hangs between them. A weight strung between their bodies. Keeping them tethered, as the Void sways beneath their feet.

“I cannot force you to act, Corvo. You are your own man. With mistakes to make, successes to grasp…”

“My own man?” Corvo is at his wit’s end. “You made this,” he refers to himself, to the tears in the Void, to the nebulous thing that is sure to destroy them both, if it succeeds. “I have been doing your dirty work for decades. Haven't I? And, Void, I never realized. I was a fool.”

“No, Corvo,” the Outsider’s voice is thin, soft against the blanket of the Void. “You have always belonged to yourself. No Duke, or Empress, or Witch, or God, could ever change that. Take that from you. And you know it.” The Outsider smiles, “You may be a foolish man, but you are no one’s jester.”

“Then tell me,” Corvo lets himself plead, “did you know about the girl?”

“No,” the Outsider concedes.

Corvo resolves to travel to Yaro. It will leave the Outsider without an ally in the capital, if that is what they are now. Allies. Corvo is not so very sure. The ship to Tyvia departs soon. Corvo must still travel North under his own abilities. The Outsider refuses to discuss the subject further. His shoulder breaks apart, fish scattering into the waters above.

Reaching forward, Corvo grabs the Outsider’s opposite wrist, pulling him back towards him before he disappears. And for the faintest moment, Corvo feels the shimmerings of loneliness, regret, and anger, bubbling under the surface of the Outsider’s skin. It's there, as the adhesive of his being, the darkness of a long solitude, and the terror of an unimagined end.

In that interval, Corvo aches to provide comfort that the Outsider couldn't possibly consider necessary.

\--

When Corvo falls from the Void, the Outsider retches, thick, black tar strangling his voice. Closing his eyes, he tips his head back, trying to swallow the bile back down. It tastes faintly of oily, burning fat. The sickness boils within him and he tips forward onto his hands and knees to let the vile fluid out.

The Void is spinning, spinning, as the Outsider tries to hold himself together. His very being is tangled in the waters here, the fabric of the Void.

When the cultists drained him, letting the blood run out, the Void filled him instead, like a lover keeping him aloft. But whatever terrible ritual his enemies are now concocting is trying to rip the Void back out, tear it from his veins. They will leave him a dessicated husk. Garbage in the water’s depths.

This time, this time he won't be a passive boy in chains. He won't go limply, waiting for his end.

With Corvo gone, he doesn't have to keep up appearances, hide how weakened the attacks on the Void have rendered him. Pressing his forehead to the dirtied slate, he tries to breathe. His lungs still expand, rhythmically, though he needs no oxygen. He tries to draw the salt all around him back into his airways. He can still feel Corvo’s hands around his throat.

_Little one, Little one,_ the whales sing. They thought he was so precious as a boy. Small and weak and beautiful. But destined for great things. _They are hurting us. You must remain. Or all is lost._

The Outsider growls, pushing himself to his feet. He wipes at his face with his hands. They come away stained. The leviathans are crying now. He cannot parse the words. Even after four-thousand years together, he can only understand them when they are gentle with him. Speaking slowly and enunciating clearly.

_We forgive you Little One. Your tongue is small, but you try so hard._

Over his head, a fresh carcass floats. Her death has nothing at all to do with the ritual. She has been split by the sailor’s chainsaw, after being stabbed and dragged ashore. A harsh, grinding machine cutting into her skin, powered by her brother’s blubber, distilled to run the technology of men.

Often times, the Outsider hates Sokolov, as he rarely has the investment to despise a man. Because in his genius, Sokolov thrust them all towards an uncertain end.

But electric lights are very pretty, twinkling in the dark of night. So the Outsider understands, too, why humans’ thirst for power remains unquenched.

Reaching up, the Outsider slots his hand inside the belly of the butchered whale. Before much longer, she’ll disappear from the Void entirely. They do not linger here, once they are dead. She is warm. And the Outsider swears he can still feel her move.

This never gets easier.

His hands now painted red and black, the Outsider stares at the carnage between his fingers.

The wave of nausea hits him again, making his ribs feel like broken glass. This time, he refuses to let the bile run out, choking is back in disgusting, wet screeches. He did not ask for godhood, but neither will he give it away.

Clawing at his own neck, he does not feel his nails pierce through the skin. He feels his body breaking up, scattering in the waters of the Void. Behind closed eyelids, he sees schools of black fish, mocking the form he's found great comfort in. Because though he is small, he is made powerful through human worship.

Through force of will, he drags his body back, tugging wayward fish back into position, stitching them together in their rightful place. But once he is assembled again, looking as pleasing as he's ever managed, he feels the catastrophe closing in.

Grabbing at his shoulder with his opposite hand, he tries to hold the squirming, slimy fish in place, keeping them from escaping.

In a moment of hysterical panic, he wonders if he will finally become the monster of his boyhood dreams. Something terrifying and dark, a menace of the deep. When before he was only ever considered beautiful. An object of desire. When he was new, he so, so wanted to be horrific. But it is a wish he has long since stopped pursuing.

Looking out across the Void, he sees it for the first time. Another school of small, delicate fish, swimming in formation. Still holding his shoulder, he steps towards the strange collection. These are not his. These are not him. Instead of black, they are moonlit silver. Just as fragile, with their tiny bones visible through translucent skin. They are the start of the creature his enemies hope will replace him.

Reaching out, the Outsider grabs hold of one of them in his fist. It struggles in his soiled hand, trying to escape. He closes his grip, tight around its tiny body, until its bones scrape against his skin.

In terror, or ineptitude, or self-preservation, the rest of the fish scatter, darting out in all directions.

The Void is still the Outsider’s, for the time being.

\--

Yaro is bleakly cold, a jewel in the snow. Corvo arrives in the brief afternoon, before the northern sun disappears completely. He has traveled over land for the last two days, Blinking as swiftly as he could manage across the Tyvian countryside. When his mana failed him, he ran, his feet never tiring.

There is much he can still learn about his body, its limitations, his affordances.

He keeps his hood up, but takes off his mask. If the Outsider cannot help him here, he must be able to speak to people directly. Lacking experience with the locals and trusted contacts, he is adrift on the island.

The shops are only just closing up, and Corvo manages to dart inside to greet the first tailor he sees. While his skin can feel the cold, he doubts he will freeze. But without the mask, his face will grow raw and chapped.

The shopgirl sells him a scarf of deep, saturated purple. Corvo can't help but laugh, and the girl, fourteen at most, stamps her foot and calls him an ungrateful Southerner. That scarf is her favorite.

“I apologize,” Corvo tries to soothe. Though he has recently been forced to use his voice more and more, he is still unaccustomed to speaking with strangers. It is good, though, that he can so easily pass among the living. “It's just the color.”

“I like the color quite a lot,” she argues. Holding out her hands, she expects Corvo to give the scarf back, “and I thought it would suit you.”

Corvo holds tight to the fabric, reaching into his pocket for coin. “No, no I do want it. But tell me, why did you think the color would suit me?”

In a huff, the girl takes the coin from Corvo’s hand. Her blonde hair falls loose around her shoulders. She wears fingerless gloves, even inside. “I don't know,” she tries to hedge, “I shouldn't say.”

Corvo worries for a moment that she knows. But the girl says nothing more, trying to usher Corvo out the door so she can close up shop, now that their business is concluded.

With the scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth, Corvo can walk the stone streets of Yaro more comfortably. Residents are just now leaving for the taverns. Corvo can tell where the pubs are from the dense smoke, rising from the chimneys, and the bright lights in the windows.

As far as he knows, there's no great distinction between any of the taverns. He chooses the third one he passes, only because he likes the way it looks inside, tables bunched together, bowls of food already served, and bright, happy faces.

It's been so long.

Though he is a stranger, the tavern-goers pay him little more than a passing glance. They have a port, after all, and engage in trade, even if there are fewer ships here than the larger cities on the island’s southern coast.

Corvo pulls an empty stool from the bar. Leaving the scarf around his face, he orders a whiskey with water, trying to make his voice clear through the scarf and the din of the assembled crowd.

“Cold too much for you?” the barwoman asks, smiling bright as she pours Corvo’s drink.

Out of politeness, he tugs down the scarf, so it hangs loose around his neck. It has been more than three decades since he died. And he never traveled to Tyvia when ha was alive. If he could be recognized at all, it would be from portraits, lithographs, the papers. It is unlikely anyone would think his appearance anything more than a resemblance to the late Lord Protector.

She serves his drink, moving on to help other patrons. Corvo sips, glad enough he can still taste the liquor. When Emily was still alive, they would spend evening hours over a bottle, Corvo’s senses never dulling. But Emily would flush prettily, Wyman teasing her about her inability to hold her drink. Corvo couldn't help but be reminded of Jessamine, who could drink with the robustness of a sailor, when she knew it would only be the two of them together for the remainder of the evening.

Corvo tries to listen as the night wears on, searching out scraps of information about the ships that arrived before him, strange children no one has seen before, or perhaps, those who have vanished from their homes. But mostly, the patrons speak of lighter fare, the upcoming holiday, the birth of a grandchild, when the hunters are likely to return to the settlement.

“I suppose I should have paid you more attention from the start, visitor,” the barkeep comes back over, pouring Corvo a second drink without his assent. “Is there something you need help with?”

Corvo doesn't have the time for discretion. The ship with the crates from Jakobson & Yale would have arrived days before him. Leads might likely already be drying up. In Yaro he has no network, no allies. He doesn't even have the Outsider’s ambivalent hand, pushing always at the small of his back.

“A ship, from Dunwall. Should have docked some days ago.”

The barkeep smiles, “My tongue is never so loose. But Jascia’s often is,” she nods towards a woman at the fireplace. Dressed in blue, she has similar, narrow features of the men and women around her. But she keeps her hair cut short, shaved down almost to her skull. It makes the gentle slope of her nose appear even more comically refined. Like she was cut from stone, but the scars around her eyes and mouth tell clear as anything, that if she were a statue, she's gone tumbling down more than once.

Corvo thanks the keep, taking his drink in hand. He tries to come up with a suitable introduction, something that won't put Jascia on the back foot from the beginning. He doesn't expect his meager charms to win her over. He just needs a place to start.

Jascia rocks back and forth in her chair, letting the feet smash against the wooden floor. It would be a terrible sound, except the patrons are so loud as to drown it out. She drinks thicky from her cup of sweetened spirits, her cheeks rosy red.

“Is this fine weather, or is it not?” Corvo asks, trying not to wince. Perhaps he should have been more direct from the start, rather than trying to make small talk.

If Jascia has her suspicions, they don’t show on her face, “Sorry, Southerner, you’re not exactly my type.” She laughs, and so do those around her. A raucous party circling her orbit. From their rough hands and wind-bitten faces, they look like they may be dockhands.

“That’s not,” Corvo stumbles. He can do this, it’s not so terribly difficult. “I have interest in a ship.”

“Oh, oh!’ she exclaims, kicking at an empty chair so it slides far enough from the table for Corvo to sit down. “We’re notoriously loose-lipped around here, compared to--” she waits for Corvo to reveal something about himself in return.

“Dunwall.”

“Ah,” she smiles. When Corvo sits, she tilts her ankle around the chair leg, getting leverage enough to pull him an inch closer to the table. With the force of it, some of his whiskey escapes around the rim of his glass, sliding down his hand.

“It would have arrived at port five days ago,” Corvo adds.

“We don’t get a great many ships straight from the capital. I know which one you mean,” Jascia says. “What interest do you have in it?”

At least here, Corvo understands he cannot give very much away. “There were empty crates aboard. I want to know what they are filled with, here.”

“Long way to come for some empty boxes,” she snickers. “You could try the distillery. We just unload. Don’t handle the shipping manifests.”

Corvo’s curiosity overtakes his good sense. While Jascia’s face is ruddy with spirits, she’s no fool. “Why are you always so willing to spread around dockside information?”

Jascia shrugs, “Up here, no one pays us to keep quiet. So no one will pay us to talk, either. Might as well get the benefit of a new friend. Better than nothing at all, Dunwall.” She holds out her glass for Corvo to return her toast.  
Before she lets him leave, she shares one last bit of information. An answer to a question Corvo hasn’t thought to ask, “There were Overseers, on that boat.”

\--

Corvo already knows where the shrine should be. A cavern, just outside the settlement, grown over with heavy thatch. The locals speak about it, but never enter. A Witch lives within.

Emily told him stories of Delilah’s Witches, dozens of them, held in service to the false-Empress and her Consort, still in Karnaca. That any of them survived the years after Delilah’s downfall seems unlikely. But all the same, Corvo will not face her unprepared.

The sunset was hours ago, the icy midnight winds whipping already-fallen snow in violent cyclones of stinging shards. Once outside the town, Corvo pulls down his scarf, putting his mask back on instead. Hunters would know better than to brave such storms.

Even with the harsh weather, the hunters’ well-worn tracks are visible in the snow. Corvo follows them towards the woods, keeping alert to commonplace dangers as he searches for the Witch’s cave.

He finds the tangled path just within the borders of the wood. It’s surprising, really, how close it really is to civilization. That no one has been bothered enough to clear the brush, to find out if the stories are true, seems so strange.

Sure that he is alone, Corvo reduces himself to bone and smoke, easing his approach to the mouth of the cave. He can’t feel the cutting sting of thorned branches as he walks, only the gentle scrape of them against his clothing, underneath that, his skeleton.

At the mouth of the cave, he listens for signs of life inside. There is liquid water, unfrozen despite the low temperatures, dripping down into a pool. The faint crackle of fire confirms that someone must be inside, tending to the flames. But whoever it is does not speak. Corvo cannot even hear them breathe.

Keeping his fog-form thin, he creeps inside the entrance of the cave, careful to muffle the sound of his feet against the stone. Light and shadow dance across the walls. As he approaches, he sees a single figure sitting by the fire. Her thin legs drawn close to her chest, she wraps her arms around her knees, staring into the flames.

The altar at her back is a perfect copy of the one at Jakobson & Yale. Only, this one is unused. Or, perhaps, it has been cleaned after yet another failed sacrifice.

The Witch tilts her head to one side, shifting the shadows into a new pattern. Now able to see her face, Corvo can tell she is not so very old, even if her limbs are frail from disuse. If she really is one of Delilah’s Witches, she couldn’t have been much more than a child when her Matron last walked the Isles.

Lost in her own thoughts, she fails to notice Corvo, dancing with the shadows of the fire until he is in position behind her back. Kneeling, he wraps his arm around her throat, pulling sharply to steal her air.

But the Witch is not without her magic too. And with the first touch of Corvo’s arm to her neck, she shrieks, trying to throw him off. But it is too late for her, even as her magic burns against Corvo’s, the two factions, sprung from a single Void, trying to burn each other off.

As she falls, Corvo hears boots at the mouth of the cave. He doesn’t have time to hide, only fight. Drawing his sword, he waits for the interlopers, phasing his body from smoke back to flesh, in case the intruders are mortal hunters, coming only because they heard her scream.

Instead, two Overseers rush towards him. One still has his meaty hand wrapped around the arm of a young boy.

When the first Overseer darts towards Corvo, his blade drawn, the second throws the terrified child against the wall.

Dodging, Corvo avoids the Overseer’s sword, pivoting around to get behind him. Ready to strike, Corvo has no intention of sparing the first Overseer, though he may keep one of them alive to question. But before he can slit the Overseer’s throat, he hears click of the gun’s trigger behind him. He jumps out of the way, out of instinct, and the bullet catches the first Overseer in the spine.

The remaining Overseer is unfazed at killing his comrade, lining up a second shot at Corvo. As far as Corvo knows, the bullet cannot harm him, so this time, he dashes directly at the Overseer, unflinching as he pulls the trigger a second time.

The bullet lodges somewhere inside Corvo. And the pain is immense. Hardly less than it would be if Corvo were living flesh. But still, he remains undeterred. And that brazenness terrifies the Overseer, who starts backing up towards the cave wall.

Corvo smashes into him, throwing them both against the stone. The Overseer’s head hits the cave, splitting open on impact. Corvo has to work fast if he is to learn anything.

“Who sent you?” he demands.

The Overseer can only loll his head from side to side, his mouth filling with blood. He’s bitten his tongue off as well. Useless.

It will be a slow death. So Corvo slits his throat. He can search the bodies for clues in a moment. First, he must see about the child.

Corvo makes sure his body is in order before taking off his mask. The child’s eyes are closed, but he is still breathing, his chest rising and falling under the thick jacket he’s been dressed in. Holding him close to his chest, Corvo cradles the back of his head, feeling for damage when the Overseer threw the boy. Though there is blood, it has already started to clot.

The child stirs in Corvo’s arms, pushing away in fear at first. Corvo tries to comfort, “It is alright, they are dead.” He loosens his grip on the boy, letting him take the space he needs.

“Who are you?” the boy asks, his eyes wide and breath short. “They told me...they told me I was special.”

How many of these ‘special’ children have there been? How many failed attempts? Corvo wonders if they even think that they can succeed. Or, perhaps, they do not have to? They only need to weaken the Outsider enough for Delilah to slip her chains. Corvo looks back to the altar.

Leaving the boy for the moment. Corvo goes to take the runes from the shrine. Like before, there are two. One for the Outsider, and one for a god who does not yet exist.

Once he removes the runes, the warm tones of the fire fade, turning to cool, ashy hues. The Outsider is here.

“Corvo.”

Corvo turns to see the Outsider, standing next to the boy. While Corvo and the Outsider move freely, the boy is locked in time, the flames are still, frozen mid-crackle.

“You can enter this place, now?”

“Yes,” the Outsider responds, “now that you have disrupted the altar.”

“What do we do with the boy?” Corvo looks down at the child, silent and still.

“They would not have succeeded with him.” The Outsider crouches next to the child, running his fingers along his jaw, pushing back his hair to look into his eyes. “I think...when I was made, there were failures as well. But I cannot know for certain. I cannot see what was before I became a god.”

“That doesn’t answer the question. Is he a threat to you, or not?”

“There are many threats. Not all of them are serious.”

Corvo pauses, choosing his words carefully, “You mean to kill him.”

The Outsider’s nails scrape against the boy’s throat. When Corvo accuses him of wanting to kill the child, he draws back sharply, standing tall. “You think --,” he stops himself. “There is no reason to kill him. There are more, already waiting in the wings. They will not try and find this child again.”

“You’re merciful, then,” Corvo argues.

“I do not care. I cannot care. To invest in a single life would be...pointless. Disastrous. Meaningless. I am built to watch Empires rise and fall, Corvo. I take interest in the grand sweep of history. But...I cannot...”

Liar.

The Outsider clicks his tongue, letting time slip through this space once again. The warmth returns to the fire and the boy shivers on the ground.

“Take him to Dunwall. There is a woman, named Moth. Give him to her.”

“Who is Moth?” Corvo asks, reaching again towards the scared boy.

“One of my Marked. There are so few of you, now. But she will keep him safe. I know she will.”

“Because she is dependent on your favor?”

The Outsider scowls before he vanishes, “Because she is not cruel.”


	6. .six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anal sex, gore/wounds, body horror, the images in this chapter are nsfw implied and have bare male chests, one image also has visible gore/wounds

The Outsider does not expect to see Corvo so soon.

He trusts that the boy they recovered from Tyvia has been safely transferred into Moth’s custody. She will treat him well.

The heavy presence of Corvo Attano knocks at the shell of the Void before stepping through. His appearance is impeccable. Well-tailored, dark coat pulled sharply around his shoulders, buttoned snugly at the front. Every angle of the fabric emphasizes the cut of Corvo’s body, deep-chest, narrow hips, broad shoulders. It is an illusion, of course. Corvo is as malleable now as the Void itself. But the look of him will always make the Outsider’s thoughts skitter inappropriately.

“Are you sure you trust her?” Corvo questions, his hands balled tight into fists at his side. His boots click against the stone platform as he steps into the Outsider’s orbit.

“She will not harm him,” the Outsider says, realizing that may be of little assurance, given current circumstances.

Corvo, for his part, mutters beneath his breath, but drops the subject. He has more pressing concerns. “Is this why you changed me?” Corvo shows his teeth, perhaps more than he intends. “You knew this was to come. That one day, there would be those threatening to unseat you. And I was to act as your dog.”

The Outsider is careful, so careful, to leave his face expressionless. But underneath his skin, he feels the sticky heat of shame. No, no. That is not what he at all intended. He only wanted to keep Corvo close. Too distraught with the thought of losing the one human he always held so dear. In the unrelenting, constant throb of muted humanity, only Corvo stood apart. Bright and brilliant Corvo.

“I said you are no man’s fool,” the Outsider tilts his head, “much less his dog.”

The edges of Corvo’s control are already frayed. He has been pushed too hard, and for too long, to keep his carefully constructed composure intact. The Outsider wonders how long he spent on his appearance, hiding every shred of his self-detested form, before coming to confront the Outsider here.

“No man’s, perhaps,” reaching forward, Corvo grabs the front of the Outsider’s coat, letting his body shift just enough that his fingers grow long and sharp, cutting into the plush fabric. Corvo drags him down, until the Outsider’s shoes touch the stone.

The Outsider is unsteady for a moment, trying to get his feet underneath him. Corvo shows no sign of letting go. Wrapping his hand around Corvo’s wrist, the Outsider waits for him to speak.

Corvo’s voice is low and thick, syrup in the briny thinness of the Void, “But tell me, am I a fool to a god?”

“Never,” the Outsider promises.

He has spent years now, trying to atone for what he has done to Corvo. Silently, never straying too close or staying for too long. Allowing Corvo what freedom he could be granted. They both know how Corvo is now tied irrevocably to the Void. But the Outsider could think of no better penance than to distance himself from the man he so desires.

“You corrupted me, and for what?”

The Outsider dips his head, low enough that Corvo should push him away in disgust, close enough their lips could meet. This is what the Outsider has wanted, isn't it? For one molecule of his lingering, unwise affection to be returned by the man he desires so deeply.

“Let me show you, the place where I became...this.” The Outsider drapes his arms around Corvo’s shoulders, keeping them pressed chest to chest. He breaks them both apart, fish and smoke, ripping them through the Void, to the altar upon which he was built.

Years ago, he brought Emily here, to show here where he had died. At the time, he only wished to demonstrate to her the peril that gripped her world. How dangerous Delilah could be, that she found this place at all.

The stone altar, heavy and black, worn down by millennia, even before the Outsider was cut here, stands an imposing weight in the center of the platform. Letting go of Corvo, the Outsider breaks apart again, the fish only stitching back together when he is in place upon the slab.

He tells Corvo a different version of the story, than the one he told his daughter. Perhaps, a truer one.

“I was thirteen, when they first saw me,” From this angle, he cannot see Corvo’s face, but he assumes his attention is rapt. “A boy down by the water. Though I often went hungry, I would put crumbs of bread along the shore, so the fish would come, skimming against my fingers.” The Outsider pulls his hands up, next to his neck, where he was tied with ropes. Clenching his hands open and closed, he continues. “They came for me again, when I was fifteen. They bathed me, made me drink brine. When I did not fall ill, they adorned my fingers with precious rings.”

Corvo stays silent, but the Outsider knows he has not left.

“I was too...scared to resist. They tied me to the altar, and I knew what was to come. But the ropes cut into the skin of my wrists. I gave in, too easily. By the time I felt the knife at my throat, it was too late. My blood ran out, and I became a god.”

Closing his eyes, the Outsider does not move, waiting for Corvo to speak.

“You are no longer a child.”

The Outsider opens his eyes, lips quirking at one side, “No, Corvo, I am not.” He bends his knees, preparing to rise from the slab, when Corvo moves, falling over the Outsider’s prone body. Shifting from solid to fog and back again. He pushes the Outsider’s knees apart, so he might fit between them.

“Like this, then,” reaching, Corvo pins his hands over each of the Outsider’s wrists, keeping him anchored in place. Corvo is firm, a solid weight above him. The Outsider cannot help how the seed of desire blooms in him, having waited so long for this thaw. He spreads his thighs around Corvo’s hips, unable to resist rolling up against his heavier body. “They held you down.”

“Yes,” the Outsider does not look away, staring back into the still-warm brown of Corvo’s eyes. He wonders, after centuries here, if they will turn to black. “They took my life by force. And gave me something greater.” The incessant press of Corvo’s chest against his own makes it difficult to form words. “But in that moment, I hated them. I hated them for what they made me into.”

“For making you divine?”

“You know better than that, dear Corvo,” craning his neck, he presses his lips to the shell of Corvo’s ear, “you know better than them all. I am the only god left within the Void. Maybe the only god that ever was. But I am too human, even now, to be divine.”

Corvo groans again, something fleeting and primal. He will always be too refined for anything more. The Outsider wraps his legs tight around Corvo’s hips, urging him to grind against him. A slight cant of his body against the slate and the Outsider’s erection presses against the flat of Corvo’s stomach.

“I did not want this gift,” Corvo says, his voice just above a whisper.

“I know this, now.”

Corvo’s eyes go wide. Letting go of one wrist, he brings his hand down across the Outsider’s face, over his cheek, down his jaw, until the pads of his fingers brush against his neck.

The Outsider feels Corvo’s fingers as a dull throb, pushing inside the slit across his throat. His scar comes undone, bleeding fresh. Though the wound is wet and open, the Outsider is not in pain. Being this close to the place he was bound has made him vulnerable in a way that should terrify him. But this is Corvo, and the Outsider is unafraid.

Opening his lips to the Outsider’s, Corvo closes the gap between them. He kisses with an anger that the Outsider knows Corvo is entitled to. Teeth and unvoiced accusations. This was never what the Outsider intended, but it is the reality that he shaped.

In his single, selfish act, the Outsider marred the only thing he has wanted since ascending. This intimacy will always be flawed. Desecrated.

But once Corvo kisses him, he refuses to relent, biting without finesse at Corvo’s bottom lip, trying to articulate his desires through clenched teeth. He wants Corvo over him, around him, inside. There are empty knots inside of him, where the Void has never reached. Where his human frailty never hardened, a corroded, tangled mess of inexperienced want.

His body flickers as he phases from his clothed body to bare, naked skin. Corvo grabs his wrist again, this time pinning it higher above his head. “You refuse to wait,” Corvo says, his lips bitten red. 

But the Outsider has already waited for so long.

“Do you want this?” Corvo asks, “want me?”

“Do you still hate what you are?” the Outsider asks in return. “Because I have never seen someone I desire more.”

“Yes,” Corvo uses his other hand to work open his pants, shoving them down past his cock. His control is complete, holding a perfect human form, from the slope of his nose, the width of his torso, the thickness of his cock. “I hate it because you gave me no choice.”

“But do you want me?” the Outsider must know for certain. They must both be sure.

“Yes.”

Corvo sticks two of his fingers against the Outsider’s bottom lip. Without hesitation, the Outsider yields, drawing them into his mouth and sucking down, tonguing between them wetly. Corvo pushes them deeper yet, against the Outsider’s palate, fucking his mouth open.

Knowing what is to come, he coats the fingers with fluid, more slick and oily than saliva would be. If Corvo notices, he says nothing, simply plunging his fingers deeper.

“You are an unjust god,” Corvo breathes, “selfish, petty.” He pulls his fingers from the Outsider’s mouth, dragging them down to circle the Outsider’s hole, once, twice, before shoving inside, both at once, stretching the Outsider more fully than he expected.

Throwing his head back against the altar, the Outsider tightens the muscles of his thighs. He has to relax, loosen for Corvo to fit inside. He wants nothing more, to dull the ache of loneliness he's endured all these years.

Even if Corvo no longer wants him after this, he will remember the sensation. The Outsider may no longer know his own name, but he will remember the pulse of Corvo’s cock inside him.

Corvo stretches him open with deft fingers, pushing the Outsider almost to the point of breaking. He feels himself falling apart already, the swirl of incoherency nipping at his heels.

When Corvo slots their hips together, running his cock along the Outsider’s, the Outsider wants to scream. He has waited long enough for this moment, one he was not sure would come to pass. And Corvo ruts against him in a way that is at once too much sensation and too little satisfaction. The Outsider wants him inside.

Finally pressing the blunt head of his cock against the Outsider’s hole, Corvo clamps his hand down over the Outsider’s neck, keeping him pinned in place as he thrusts in. For all his torturous force, Corvo has prepared the Outsider well. He slides in smoothly, rolling his hips until they are flush with the Outsider’s narrower ones.

“Corvo,” the Outsider will not be defeated by this. He wants it, yes, desperately so, but he will not be meek or afraid.

He arches his back off the slate, chasing Corvo’s hips as they start to thrust, using his legs to try and drag Corvo back down, keep them tangled together. He throws his arms around Corvo’s shoulders, trying to drown them in the weight of this act. It may mean very little to Corvo, a man who has taken many lovers, but though the Outsider is ancient, this is all blindingly new.

Pressing his lips to Corvo’s, the Outsider coaxes Corvo back down, so they are fused together upon the altar. He can feel it even now, the way the Void flexes inside him, pouring through otherwise empty veins. But having Corvo like this is something grander. Because it was born of his own desire, as a man, not a god.

Corvo has no name to call him, other than, “Outsider.” And the Outsider has no name to offer with any authenticity. But he chants Corvo’s like a summons, a prayer.

When the Outsider comes, messy across his stomach, he sees the Empty behind his eyes. The place beyond the Void he will never touch. He bites down on Corvo’s lip and his mouth fills with bitter smoke. Neither of them have blood left to give.

Corvo pulls out of him as he finishes, coming dry without fluid to expel. But Corvo’s wide, alert eyes betray just how much he has enjoyed himself. The bitten lip is whole again. The Outsider’s neck sewn up, with only a silvery scar from ear to ear.

“Corvo…”

“Don't,” Corvo warns, scrambling to his feet, starting to arrange his clothing. “This isn't--”

Corvo never finishes his sentence, because as he tries to descend from the altar, the Outsider screams.

He feels it now, tearing sensations beneath his skin. In a panic, Corvo clings to him, pulling him up onto his lap as the Outsider convulses. A great pain wracking his body, toes to scalp.

The Void pitches, trying to shake loose an unneeded interloper. Only this time, the one it expels is him. The Outsider clutches at Corvo’s shoulders, the pain too blinding to feign disinterest.

Nothing hurt this much. Even when he died. It did not hurt like this.

And then, it stops.

The Outsider shoves himself away from Corvo’s chest, suddenly aware of Corvo’s continued displeasure with him. He tries to stand, but his legs are weak.

Void.

He looks up, and instead of the ocean, he sees the stars, peeking coyly through gaps in the canopy above.

The Outsider knows where they are.

“My coat,” the Outsider rasps, suddenly quite aware of his nakedness.

Corvo may hate him, but he is a gentleman, after all. Having found his legs just fine, he looks about the altar for the Outsider’s clothes. But the Outsider already knows he will not find them. 

They are no longer in the Void.

When Corvo comes up empty-handed, he removes his own coat, draping it over the Outsider’s shoulders. The Outsider pulls it down, covering his lap instead, giving him some semblance of modesty. Not for his own sake, or Corvo’s, really, but because of the impending danger they are undoubtedly in.

“Where are we?” Corvo asks.

Finally able to put his feet into the dirt, the night chill runs over the Outsider’s skin. He tries to tie Corvo’s coat around his waist. “The Continent.”

Corvo’s eyes narrow, “Pandyssia?” Corvo scans their surroundings.

Turning, the Outsider looks upon the sacrificial table to make sure. Yes, this is the place in which he died. The millennia of rain falling through the leaves have worn the stone down further, leaving the rock smooth in places it is not in the Void.

“We cannot stay here,” the Outsider murmurs. He knows where they are, perhaps two days travel from the coast. The cultists did not take him far from the sea. At the time, there were roads leading from the ocean to the temples buried in the forests, but they are long grown over.

If they are not careful, wild beasts will find them, drawn to the scent of their vulnerability, their strangeness in these lands.

The Outsider is still worshiped here, however crudely, by those hidden deep in the continent’s interior. They call him by another name, one that Corvo would find unpronounceable, and the Outsider finds distasteful. There are reasons he has long turned his attention to the Isles. What became of the civilization here was violent, terrifying, and of their own hubris. The Outsider would not have intervened, even if he could.

Corvo falls in step at the Outsider’s left side, eyes darting from side to side. Though the Outsider knows there are no other humans for miles, that is the least of their concerns.

“Can you not return us to the Void?” Corvo asks.

The Outsider bites back his laughter, “Why ask a question to which you already know the answer? I have been usurped.” Holding out his hand, the Outsider tries to draw magic forth, seeing just how tenuous his connection is. The wisps of Far Reach fan out before him, allowing him to jump from Corvo’s side to the sturdy branch overhead, already weighed down by heavy leaves, as wide and flat as a sheet of drafting parchment, “I can still manage parlor tricks, at least.”

Below him, Corvo Blinks, teleporting from the forest floor to join him on the branch above. The tree groans, but it holds their weight. “Parlor tricks,” Corvo mocks, “that's all your gifts ever were.”

The Outsider only wishes to wallow in his own frustration. He ignores Corvo’s jab, “I have been rejected, but my connection to the Void is still unbroken.” He grabs at Corvo’s hand, turning it over to see the Mark, glowing so vividly from his bones that the light shines through his skin. “We would be helpless without it.”

“We?”

“I do not know what happens to you, if I am severed completely,” the Outsider admits. There is little point now in being evasive.

“So I exist only by your whims.”

The Outsider scowls, “By my mastery of the Void, perhaps.”

Reaching for the ground, the Outsider descends from the branches. Height gives them little safety. A fact Corvo soon realizes as a massive serpent, some twenty feet in length, breaks through the foliage, flying on razor-sharp wings towards them. Its wings slice through branches, clearing the way for it to slither through the air.

Corvo Blinks to the ground, throwing his body on top of the Outsider’s. They both stay stone-still, until the beast passes.

“What the fuck?” Corvo whispers in awe.

“Such creatures are common here,” the Outsider tries to shove against Corvo’s weight so he can stand. Once on his feet, he re-ties Corvo’s jacket around his hips. He needs something more reasonable to wear. “All the monstrosities evolution can dream up, supported by ecosystems larger than all of the Isles combined.”

Reaching up into the nearest low branch, the Outsider picks a ripe fruit with both hands, a bright red bauble, as large as a decorative globe one might find in Dunwall. “I've heard they taste sweet at first, then faintly sour as the juice warms in your mouth.”

“You are from here,” Corvo states the assumption as fact.

“I was a boy in a civilization that once rooted itself in this soil,” he continues walking on, sure that Corvo will follow. “But I am no more of this place than you are. It was different, then.”

Never tiring, they walk through the night and into the next day, the following night and morning. The sweltering jungle gives way to the more sparsely vegetated coast. What were once paved avenues lined with stone buildings have been reduced to rubble, barely more than a suggestion of the seaside city that once stood facing towards the Western Isles.

The sand is so hot that it burns the Outsider’s bare feet as it sinks between his toes.

They have no way of reaching the Isles, no ship to carry them the weeks at sea. But crashed against the shoreline is an expedition boat, perhaps only two decades old. The Outsider thinks little of the captain, or the crew. They are long dead. Surely. But he may be able to find a fucking pair of pants.

He and Corvo work through the wreckage, pulling enough treated wood to build a shelter on the beach. The Outsider finds the pants he needs, though they are too big around his waist. He ties them off with rope. He takes boots off a sun-bleached skeleton, fitting them to his feet.

Once dressed, he helps Corvo erect the shelter, it's crude, but perhaps building it helps Corvo feel useful. They are not alive, not really, so they may as well sleep under the stars. They don't have to sleep at all. But it's as good a way to pass the time as any.

“What do we do now?” Corvo asks, after they have run out of busywork to keep their mouths shut and hands occupied.

The Outsider looks out upon the sea, watching the tide go back out and the sun begin to set. Taking his found boots back off, he curls his toes in the white sand of Pandyssia.

He hates this place, where he lived and died. He hates it with every fiber of his being that remembers what it means to starve, to be afraid, helpless and alone. He hates that he must face all these terrors yet again.

“Delilah will not tolerate our existence. She must destroy me, for her puppet to ascend to godhood,” he grabs up a fistful of sand, throwing it out towards the water, watching it spread as it hits the breeze. “She will come for us, in time.”

Until then, they can only wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read! Comments and kudos are always very much appreciated. 
> 
> [Author's Tumblr](http://imperfectkreis.tumblr.com) | [Artist's Tumblr](http://bloodwrit.tumblr.com)


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